Dreamer
by DunmerFromAldRuhn
Summary: What defines a person? Deeds? Life and memories? Appearance? Ichigo awakens in a past where he remembers nothing of all these things. What is he? How can he be 'real' when he doesn't even look like the 'real' one? Can he overcome his fear of remembering?
1. Prologue: Waking Up

BETA-ED by Faroush and Orchamus all thanks for good grammar, punctuation and spelling should go to them.

* * *

Prologue: Waking up.

* * *

A groan escaped his mouth. He was in pain. It felt like all of his cells were on fire. He groaned again and tried to open his eyes. He was dripping wet. His hands and legs were numb, a fiery numb. As soon as he opened his eyes he winced, nearly blinded by the brightness of the light. He silently cursed all the gods that existed as his head rung like an old church bell, while he tried to move to sit up.

It was useless; he couldn't move anything except his eyelids. Thus, all that was left for him to do was trying to adjust to the harsh light around him. What he could feel of his left hand was rather sharp, probably a fracture or broken bone, and his left leg felt like something was sticking from it.

After a short while his eyes adapted to the brightness around him and he could see that the sky was blue without any clouds. He could see leafless trees above him. A few minutes later he regained most of the feeling in his legs, and after half an hour he could even move his body to some extent. Then he noticed something - he was cold, freezing even. He slowly sat up and saw that he was lying at the edge of a small lake, with his legs submerged in the water. And somehow he had a tree branch stuck through his left leg.

_Well, first things first._

Leaning forward, he pulled the tree branch out of his leg with a grunt. The young man discarded the bloody branch and looked around while leaning back on his right hand. The landscape seemed to be similar, almost ridiculously uniform in every direction. He tried to remember what had happened to him, but nothing came to mind and thus he soon chose to abandon that train of thought. And yet, there was something even more disturbing than the fact that he couldn't remember what had happened to him. No, the most disturbing thing the he had noticed since his awakening was that he couldn't even remember his own face. The teen groaned while shifting himself so that he was parallel to the water's edge. He needed to know it, more than anything. He needed to know what he looked like.

It took a couple minutes, moving slowly so as to avoid aggravating his injuries. He looked into the surprisingly clear water and his reflection stared back at him with a lone red eye. The teen removed the hair from in front of his face to look at the other eye; it was as red as the first one. The red eyed-teen had long hair; it was somewhere around three feet long, not quite reaching the middle of his back. It was white. He frowned at his reflection, deciding to cut it the first chance he got. His skin was pale, almost white. In other words he looked like an albino.

While he might be considered young, he could just as easily be mistaken for being older due to his dirty, haggard appearance, his rather gaunt appearance giving him a weathered and worn look. Apparently whatever he had been previously doing had worn him out a lot.

He grunted in pain as he somehow managed to lift himself off of the ground and stumble away from the shore, being careful about how he put his weight on his injured leg. As soon as he stopped to take a break, a sharp pain erupted in his chest, nearly causing his eyes to roll up into his head. The young man fell to the ground, unable to handle the intensity of the pain. He laid there for almost an hour, unable to move from exhaustion.

Slowly, the sun disappeared behind the horizon. He knew he had to move if he didn't want to freeze to death, it was already very cold, and after nightfall it would be even colder. The cold had become a bit more bearable now that he was out of the water, but only a little, and it would be far worse once it got dark.

The white haired teen sighed heavily. Lazing around in this cold weather wouldn't do any good to his already exhausted body. He needed to get moving if he wanted to live. He got up on his shaky legs once more and almost fell over a few times while standing up. Looking around, he decided to move from tree to tree so that he could use them for support if the need arose. The pain in his left leg hadn't disappeared but was now accompanied by numbness which made it slightly more bearable. Strangely enough the blood flowing from the wound had stopped almost immediately after he pulled the branch out. If his head hadn't felt like a new year's firework display going off, the white haired teen might have even been coherent enough to notice.

Several hours passed in what seemed like the blink of an eye. The nameless youth wasn't getting anywhere in particular and was about to collapse again when he spotted several people in black clothing not too far away.

He tried to call out to them but instead of his voice all that came out was a set of dry coughs. His throat was dry, and he wondered why he hadn't noticed it earlier. Fortunately the coughing worked just as well since one of these strangely clothed persons heard him and was pointing in his direction. Unfortunately the coughing hadn't subsided but gotten worse and the red-eyed young man collapsed and fell to the ground while his body was shaking in pain.

Soon all three of the black clothed people had reached him and started asking questions. He couldn't do anything but cough in response. Despite his immense headache the white haired boy could hear one of them say something about some spiritual thing. The words sounded oddly familiar, but he couldn't place from where he had heard them before.

The small group decided to take him to a local doctor, since 'such high spiritual power was very rare', and they couldn't leave someone as suspicious as him out there without any surveillance. In the beginning one of them tried to make him stand on his own, but immediately an intense pain rushed through the teen's whole body, and he coughed up some blood. One of the men in black who had been holding him hadn't been ready for something like that and accidentally let go of him, causing the red-eyed teen to fall. Fortunately, the other two hadn't been so unprepared and had caught him in mid-air.

The young man had only been barely conscious before, but those sudden movements of falling, getting up and then almost falling again finally allowed him to sink into the comfortable darkness of unconsciousness.

* * *

Two years later.

* * *

"Shirou, wake up!" The voice that brought said Shirou back into the realm of consciousness was neither really loud, nor really bossy; just very confident. There was also a certain sharpness to the intonation of this female voice: it sounded like someone was cutting someone in two with a single clean slash. The young man called Shirou could see her face as she said it without even opening his eyes. She would either say it with that neutral everyday expression, or with a light scowl announcing her annoyance. Once he thought about it, he decided that she was probably annoyed and in this case her lips were curved down, her eyebrows scrunched together and eyes lidded as they glared down at him.

Despite the danger of annoying the person the voice belonged to, Shirou continued to lie on his bed for a bit longer. He was a morning person, but he like his sleep too. Either way, he didn't want to try Lisa's patience for too long. Lisa was a woman with a short fuse, but oddly enough, not every spark could ignite that fuse. In most cases the words she said just didn't register with him. Shirou wasn't a person to calmly obey others, so he tended to ignore those who ordered him around, but today wasn't an ordinary day. Today was what could be called his 'birthday', the day he had awoken at the shore of that lake. Thus Shirou didn't want to quarrel with anyone, at least not too much.

He still couldn't remember anything before waking up at the shore; his head was as empty as a blank sheet of paper. Soon after being dismissed from the hospital he had been adopted by one of the smaller noble families. The patriarch of the family had seen his levels of reiatsu and had had high hopes for him. The name they had given him, 'Shirou', was purely symbolic. He was the fourth son of this man, adopted or not. The family patriarch also had several daughters besides his sons. One of them was standing right above him now with a slightly annoyed expression on her face. Her name was Lisa. Lisa of the Yadomaru clan.

Still, even if his so-called 'father' had had high expectations for him, Shirou had been a disappointment up until now. Even with his high levels of spiritual pressure he couldn't form connection with an asauchi. Thanks to the influence of his family he had been offered to adopt the zanpakuto of a deceased shinigami, but Shirou had refused and showed no signs of changing his opinion soon. The young man's attention was diverted from his own mind when Lisa addressed him once again.

"Get ready. Shiba-sempai said he wants to throw a party for you." She went silent for a moment and then continued "And before I forget, someone is waiting for you outside." After saying that she made sure he got up before she left to take care of her own business.

Shirou sighed. Shiba-sempai, or Shiba Kaien to be precise, was a good person, someone he could even call a role model. Yet he always did unnecessary things which grated on young man's nerves. They had come to know each other only because of their looks. While their hair, skin, and eye color differed, they otherwise looked like two swords forged from the same mould. Well, other than the way they wore their hair, of course. While Shirou opted to have his hair pulled-up in a short pony-tail, Shiba-sempai's hair resembled a hedgehog's back, spiking wildly all over.

Yet someone was waiting for him and he was taking his time. As rude as he sometimes was he didn't do any of that on purpose. So clearing his mind of the strange people surrounding him, the strange people who did strange things for even stranger reasons, he began readying himself for another day of doing his own strange things for his own even stranger reasons.

* * *

Review and all… Thanks for reading.


	2. Chapter 1: Decisions, Decisions…

Beta-ed by **Faroush** and **Orchamus.**Go read their stories!

* * *

Chapter 1: Decisions, Decisions…

* * *

There were three people waiting for him. By the looks of it two of them were servants, the third one however… The third one was as dignified as they came, standing as straight as possible, defying the hold his apparent age should have had over his body. His eyes were quite the puzzle for Shiro, glinting with the hints of arrogance that many shinigami acquired, but tempered with a certain self knowledge. The man's face was full of wrinkles and by the way the wrinkles decorated his face it could easily be assumed that he didn't smile too often. His mouth was hidden by a big moustache.

After a few more moments Shirou finally realized who the man before him was. It was the current leader of the noble house of Kuchiki, Kuchiki Ginrei, the only shinigami in Seireitei who could possibly compete with the Captain-Commander in terms of power and experience. But the already existing gap between the two of them would become visible for everyone quickly enough, twenty more years and Ginrei Kuchiki would be but a powerless old man and Captain-Commander Yamamoto would still be the undisputed head of the Shinigami.

Shirou quickly bowed and greeted the man. "Greetings, Kuchiki-sama. Please forgive my tardiness; I wasn't informed who exactly was waiting for me." The young man bowed again and waited for a response from the old clan head. That kind of behavior had been drilled into his very being from the day one of him being Yadomaru.

"Your apology is accepted. Let us get on to business. I have an offer for you. I want you to instruct my grandson in the art of Shunpo. I was offered the services of Shihoin Yoruichi, but I think someone of a lesser level of skill may be a better teacher. Yoruichi-san's skills are too great, and she hasn't had any apprentices worth mentioning in a long time." The Kuchiki patriarch stopped for a moment to let the young man process all the information, and continued after several seconds. "I need you to train him to a level at which Yoruichi-san will be able to take up his training. As a prodigy in Shunpo, you are the most suitable person for this task. I will give you two days to consider my offer. I understand that you may be not very confident in your teaching abilities, but please consider it."

The pale man sharply inhaled, it wasn't everyday that the head of the Kuchiki Clan said 'please' to someone, especially if it were a person like Shirou. The old man bid him farewell and left an astonished and light-headed Shirou behind. The white haired youth almost jumped when Lisa approached him from behind and tapped his shoulder. His head sharply turned toward his adopted sister at a speed which nearly tore his neck apart.

"What's the matter?" The girl looked at him, suspiciously waiting for Shirou to give some excuse about not daydreaming. However, her expectations did not come true this time.

"Nothing, never mind…" Shirou mumbled in a weak voice, more to himself than to his sister. The offer was very tempting, but if he were to fuck up somewhere… the consequences of it would be too great for him to handle.

"Whatever then… hurry up." Lisa's tone sounded like she wanted to know what was going on, but not enough to push him into telling her about it. She walked past him with a posture that screamed irritation, leaving behind a still shocked Shirou who kept wondering about the Kuchiki's offer for another minute before he went after her.

* * *

Later that night

* * *

Two hours after the party had officially ended, Shirou was sitting on the roof of the building where the party had been going on. Kaien had, as always, went overbroad with it. He had invited people that Shirou didn't even know. His reaction to the question of why he had invited them all had been predictable: a silly laugh and a sheepish smile followed by the words: 'The more the merrier'.

The young man had just sighed at that. It just couldn't be helped; at least he had met some new people… not like he would ever recognize them after that, not even if he ran into them again tomorrow. Shirou turned his head when he heard a noise behind him. It was Kaien.

"What do you need, Shiba-sempai?" The young man's voice was tired, weak and chastising.

Kaien coughed in surprise at the accusing tone in the teen's voice and spoke sheepishly. "Nothing, just trying to skip out on the cleaning…"

"That's what Lisa would call being a lazy-ass." The white haired teen allowed himself a slight chuckle when he imagined an irritated Lisa admonishing the oldest Shiba sibling or maybe not… it shouldn't be called admonishing when it was more of 'stating the facts with accusatory tone'.

The older teen's facial expression became even more sheepish. "Nay, I'm not like that, besides…"

Watching the expressions ripple over Shiba's face was quickly becoming quite entertaining so Shirou pushed it further. "Besides what?"

"Your Lisa-chan is pretty strict when it comes to being lazy." Knowing the truth Kaien had the dignity to blush.

"True. Doesn't make you any less lazy though, and Lisa is strict with everyone but herself." Shiba's head bowed at the facts. It was an undeniable truth that Lisa was equally strict towards everyone. That 'everyone' did not include herself by default was a fact Shirou's adopted sister liked to overlook.

Both young men sat in silence for a while, enjoying the quiet companionship, until Kaien spoke. "You know, I think I might know why you can't for a connection with asauchi."

Shirou was obviously interested, although he tried to hide his interest by sounding as bored as possible. "Hmmmmm…?"

"You said that you don't remember anything of your life before you woke up here…" The black haired teen stopped and waited for a confirmation from Shirou.

"Yeah…" It wasn't exactly the truth since he remembered how he felt, but that didn't matter since Kaien meant normal memories.

After receiving confirmation the black haired young man continued. "Everyone in Soul Society who uses a Zanpakuto has had at least twenty years of life experience, either dead, alive, or both. In your case, your life experience is only two years worth, it will increase with time and maybe at some point in the future you might be able to do something with asauchi. But for now I'm afraid it's impossible, your own soul is unsure of itself, unable to determine its own characteristics without more background knowledge. And to change a nameless sword into your very own zanpakuto you much feed it your 'heart' so to say. Like… your memories, your feelings and such I imagine." He smiled when he finished his short speech, ignoring the fact that it was a very depressing conclusion.

Shirou released a breath he didn't realize he had been holding up until that point, and spoke with obvious sarcasm in his words. "That sounds… reassuring."

"Haha, bet it does…" Both Kaien's smile and laugh seemed awkward, like he had just now realized just how depressing it had to be for the white-haired young man, especially after Kaien's little speech.

"Hey you two, get down and help clean this place up!" They both jumped at the angry sounding voice. When they looked down from the roof they saw that it was Kukaku, Kaien's younger sister, who was staring at them from the ground. Her right brow seemed to be twitching slightly although Shirou couldn't really be sure at night. His eyesight was not as good as one would expect.

"No need to be so angry Kukaku." Kaien smiled apologetically and began climbing down from the roof. Even though Kukaku was his younger sister she was the kind of girl who could instill fear and respect into anyone if she wanted to. Yet she didn't accomplish this with wits and manners but with brute force instead. Shirou followed his sempai's example and climbed down without a single word of protest.

"I have every right in the world to be angry!" The white haired teen chuckled when he saw how the older Shiba sibling was being berated by his sister. Kukaku was quite amusing; she was almost two feet shorter than her brother and yet she still managed to order him around.

Strange people indeed.

* * *

One week later.

* * *

Shirou sighed while looking at the small black haired boy before him. The boy was breathing hard and sweating a lot. He was slumped over with hands gripping knees in order to prevent his body from collapsing from exhaustion. Shirou sighed again. _'Two hours! Two fucking hours! And still nothing in the way of any real progress.'_

Up until now he had been teaching the kid the basics and theory behind Shunpo, tossing him crumbs of Zanjutsu as well for variety. The young man let his head hang down as a feeling of hopelessness overcame him. Annoyed he muttered, "You're dumb, you know that?"

The boy, who was known as Kuchiki Byakuya, obviously didn't like hearing him say that at all. The kid seemed to have quite the ego, and didn't like it when someone said something negative about him. He yelled at his trainer with a very loud voice when he heard the disappointed mutter. "What!"

Shirou sighed one last time and got up. He walked to boy and put a hand on his student's head. "Exactly what I said." It seemed to anger child even more, but the young man didn't mind it. He continued. "You don't understand what you need to do, or what you're doing wrong."

At the moment Shirou finished speaking, the boy's face turned into a grimace of anger, confusion and disbelief. "Huh…?" He wasn't able to whisper anything but this one word.

The young man groaned. Even if Byakuya was still a kid, he had expected him to act less like a child and more like the clan heir he was. He couldn't believe that this kid was supposed to one day become a clan head like his grandfather. "God help me…" He crouched down to look the kid directly into his eyes. "You need to focus your reiatsu in one spot and then project yourself towards the direction you want to go, not project your reiatsu at a spot and walk there. If you do the thing correctly, the moving part would be done with on its own." While speaking he tried to make his best to show what was required of the child. Shirou's hands flew about, changing positions and bending in impossible angles, all of it just to try and make Byakuya understand.

It seemed that all his efforts were fruitless. All he was able to get from the child was another "Huh?" This time the kid's face showed only confusion. It seemed that Shirou's incredible efforts had only managed to confuse the boy even more. He was a terrible teacher. Kuchiki Ginrei overestimated his abilities.

That last 'huh' tore down the last bit of patience left in Shirou's mind. He burst out with an aggrieved exclamation, yelling "What's with that 'huh'! You're a Kuchiki, aren't you? Behave like one!" Basically, the young Kuchiki behaved like some snot nosed punk and it was getting on Shirou's nerves. His inability to do even the sloppiest attempt of shunpo annoyed the young man even further.

Byakuya smiled sheepishly and tried to cover his embarrassment with laughing, but he quickly shut up when he saw the face of his temporary sensei. It was very rare to see him so angry, as he usually was easy to anger but hard to infuriate. He changed his smile to a solemn, apologetic looking face and spoke. "I'll try harder this time."

"Good." Shirou sighed and moved to his previous resting place in the shadow of a tree.

The boy continued his attempts at shunpo without much improvement. Four hours had passed and only then did he begin to show some barely acceptable results. It seemed that an eternity had passed when Shirou awoke at the sound of Byakuya crashing headfirst into the wall of the mansion with his first semi-successful shunpo. He chuckled and continued to watch. The child's results improved gradually with each shunpo attempted.

Finally it was time to end his training for the day. He called the kid over and spoke to him while stifling a yawn. "you're doing better, but still a little off. You've got some good speed for a beginner; however, you were aiming over there, didn't you?" Shirou gestured at the place ten meters away from the place Byakuy had appeared at.

The boy kept silent, probably in shame.

The young man waved his hand in a 'doesn't matter'-way and looked right into Byakuya's eyes. "It's okay; if you learn how to move then learning how to control it would be your next step, right? You don't have to get it right at the first try. At least you've finally got it down somewhat."

"Huh?"

"We will continue tomorrow, it's gotten too hot…" Shirou waved his hand and walked to the exit of the compound while trying to stay in the shadows.

* * *

The next day

* * *

Shirou was sitting in a room without many decorations. Only a bonsai tree and a painting of a mountain from the real world gave the impression that this room was used from time to time. The light was streaming from behind the door. His father was in front of him. The head of the Yadomaru family was neither an old man, nor a young one. His hair already had some gray in it but still was black for the most part. His face was wrinkled with the passage of time and the carrying of many emotions.

"So, have you decided what to do about your Zanpakuto problem? Will you agree to take one from the storage?" His voice was warm and careful, as if he was trying not to offend his adopted son.

"Yes, otou-sama." Shirou bowed his head to strengthen his words and the resolve behind them. There was no sense in running away from something that needed to happen anyway. If he couldn't do anything with asauchi, and he knew he wouldn't anytime soon, if ever, he would be required to take one from repository if he ever planned to gain a significant rank among the Shinigami.

The man scratched his chin while pondering the young man's response. Then he smiled broadly. "Good, that's the answer I was hoping for. However, before you can take a sword from there you need to go through a mental and physical examination so they know what kind of Zanpaktou is compatible with you." He then rubbed the back of his head as if he was feeling uncomfortable while sighing, his eyes closed. He knew how uncomfortable it would make his son.

Shirou sighed and stood up. "If this is what is required, I will do it. If there is nothing else you need, I will take my leave now."

His 'father' nodded and called for the servants. "Hayate-san, please bring some sake."

Shirou left the room without looking back. His thoughts were swirling around as though caught in a whirlwind. He didn't know what to expect from these examinations and if he was to be honest with himself, he even felt a bit afraid. He didn't know, however, just what of.

* * *

The day of examination.

* * *

"Well, what can I say… You certainly seem to be an interesting person, Yadomaru-san." The woman who was examining Shirou spoke with amused tone in her voice. She looked through the contents of the mess that was her work table and put on a pair of glasses sitting atop a particularly hazardous stack. The woman continued to look for something and stopped only when she finally found a clean piece of paper and a pencil. She scribbled down something, used a stamp on it and gave it to the teen.

Shirou looked at note curiously, not understanding what its contents meant he asked. "Huh? F-1691? What does that mean?"

The woman smiled oddly, but explained it nevertheless. "Nothing much, just your personality is considered F-1691 type." Her smile turned apologetic while she scratched her nose.

Shirou sighed in defeat. F-1691 probably _was_ his personality type, but something told him that there was so much more than numbers and single letter behind it. A sudden realization came to his mind. He needed to ask something that had been bothering him since his birthday party.

"Can I ask you something?" The young man spoke with confidence in his voice while scowling lightly.

"Of course." The doctor smiled sweetly, encouraging him to ask.

He was somewhat uncomfortable about the nonexistence of his memories and so he tried not to look into her eyes when he was talking. "Is it possible that the absence of my memories is the cause of my inability to do change asauchi into a proper Zanpaktou?"

The woman opened her mouth in surprise, not expecting a question like that. She wanted to laugh at the childishness of Shirou's insecurities seeing how he refused to meet her eyes, but quickly regained her composure and became all business like. "While this would be correct in most cases, your case is much more complicated. It is related to your physical anomalies." She rummaged through the mess on her desk like a stray animal in a garbage can and took some book from the depths of the mess. Then she searched for something in the book while speaking. "Physically, you are as surprising as you are mentally. Your Reiatsu for example, is not only large, but it also has the taint of a Hollow. It is not uncommon, most people who were Hollows and were cleansed by some Shinigami have such a taint. Another thing that is bothering me, however, is how large it is. The size of this taint suggests that you might have been at least an Adjuchas class Menos." Halfway through her monologue she seemed to have found what she had been looking for and when her little speech stopped she presented it to the teen.

Shirou looked at the pages she was showing him. 'Hakusui and Saketsu – invaluable parts of Shinigami, with them damaged in any way or form a Shinigami becomes a normal plus soul.' Shirou scowled, not understanding the woman's implications and asked. "What are you trying to say?"

"What I mean is that your Hakusui and Saketsu are damaged, not fatally but enough to prevent you from forming a connection with asauchi." She spoke with barely visible annoyance. The woman probably thought that not understanding what she meant right away was a bad thing,

"So, that's how it is…" The young man sighed and looked at the doctor, expecting her to say something.

"If you don't have any more questions, you're free to go." With a wave of her hand she motioned Shirou to the door. The teen bowed his head politely and left the room.

* * *

It was first time Shirou had ever seen something as grand as this place. Hundreds of shelves with hundreds of zanpaktous on them, this place was truly a magnificent sight. He couldn't even imagine how much time it had taken to gather all those swords in here and then catalogue every last one of them.

Surprisingly, for a place of such importance it was rather poorly guarded - two men outside and one worker inside. Said worker was currently looking at the paper Shirou had gotten from the doctor. "F-1691… okay I'll show you the way. Follow me." The man got up and walked past rows of those shelves.

While he was following the man the teen looked around in amazement. It was visible from the entrance but when they started walking he understood how large exactly this place was. "This place is quite big, isn't it?"

The man chuckled at apparent amazement in Shirou's voice and responded. "Yeah, this place contains every zanpaktou that we were able to recover from fallen Shinigami. Fortunately, if yours and the zanpaktou's personalities don't match you simply won't be able to use it correctly and since mere burglars don't know in what section to look for what personality type they won't make any money by stealing them. Of course you can just take a zanpakuto and use it like a common sword, but then again taking an asauchi from warehouse of Soul Arts Academy would do them more good." He finished and smiled proudly. "Amazing place, eh?"

"Yeah." The teen didn't have anything else in his vocabulary to respond to that.

After several minutes of walking the man finally stopped. "Well, here we are. You can choose from here up to here." He used his hand to show from where to where Shirou could take zanpaktou from. "The notable ones are: Muramasa, previously owned by a Kuchiki, although it has a bad history… well never mind. The second one is Jikan no Ikiryou, it can manipulate time to a certain degree. The third is Kusari o Tsunagu, which has good Kido abilities. The last one is Koritora, the strongest Ice-Type zanpakuto in all of Seireitei so far." The man finished his tour by showing Shirou what he thought was an array good swords and looked at the young man.

The young man in question was not looking at any of the presented blades. His eyes had been caught by an unusual black sword. Unlike a normal zanpaktou, the blade was black, slightly curved and approximately 70 cm long, the sword had round tsuba with sun engraved on it. The hilt was 25 cm long and wrapped in thin black leather strips. "What about this sword? What can you tell me about it?" Shirou turned his head to look at the man who stood behind him.

"Sure. The owner died before reaching Shikai, so we don't know about its abilities. It's as good as any other Zanpaktou I suppose." The man finished with a shrug which seemed to express something like 'I don't care what happens to you if you take this one'.

Shirou smiled contently. He didn't want something that people already knew about. He needed something he could discover by himself. "Good enough, I'll take it. What papers do I need to fill out?"

"Ah, yes, please follow me."

* * *

Shirou was sitting by a koi pond at home, trying to meditate in hopes of contacting his zanpaktou's spirit, but so far all his efforts had been futile. He had been sitting there meditating for three hours straight and nothing had happened yet. His concentration was beginning to waver and he completely lost it when a sudden, loud voice forcefully brought him out of his meditative state.

"Shirou!" Lisa's voice was as sharp as ever and made him stop his meditation. He turned his head to look at his 'sister', raising an eyebrow in inquiry.

She didn't say anything else and he asked. "What?"

The girl huffed and whispered to herself. "You seem to be pretty popular with nobles…" Seeing that Shirou heard it anyway she sighed and continued. "Shihoin Yoruichi is waiting for you outside."

The young man got up and walked towards the exit with Lisa trailing behind him. She seemed annoyed about something. Probably because he was 'popular with nobles' or because she was the youngest in the family with the exception of him and was forced to act as some sort of a messenger. Shirou, being the youngest in whole family, naturally did so as well on many occasions, but when something concerned him it was Lisa who had to act as the messenger.

"Are you a messenger now? What about servants?" he questioned, hoping to discover the source of her irritation, as despite how sharp she could be, she was his favorite sibling.

"It seems that way. The servants are preparing something that father has ordered." Her answer puzzled him, she didn't sound in the least bit aggravated at having been made into a messenger. Shirou shrugged, reading Lisa's emotions was sometimes an impossible thing to do, given her stoic attitude, so maybe she was agitated and he just didn't notice it.

When they reached the outside he instantly spotted a group of four people. One of them had to be Yoruichi, it wasn't hard to tell which either with her rather rare skin coloration. Two of her companions seemed to be members of the Omnitsukido Corps because they were dressed like typical ninja from books he read. The last one was a large man with light brown, almost orange hair and self-satisfied smirk. The man kept looking around with an appraising look on his face.

The young man saw Yoruichi talking with a servant. The dark skinned woman seemed oddly energetic and had a broad smile, a Cheshire's grin more like, fixed onto her face. Then she saw the teen and waved her hand energetically. When he and Lisa approached them the woman greeted them. "Yo! Yadomaru Shirou, son of Yadomaru Katou I presume?"

Shirou gave her a small, polite smile before bowing. "Yes, though I might add that I am his adopted son."

The woman made a rather funny face portraying her emotions in exaggeration. She was confused, curious and irritated all at the same time, managing to convey all of this with a single pout. "Reeeaally?" When Shirou didn't say anything she shrugged and gestured at Lisa. "And this is?"

The teen said in a matter of fact like voice, "Lisa, my sister." Lisa nodded her head in a light bow without changing her neutral expression. But judging by her slightly furrowed brows she was annoyed at the older woman for knowing him and not knowing her.

Shirou decided to skip directly to business just to not let the irritable sister get any more annoyed with Yoruichi's ignorance. "So, Yoruichi-sama, what brings you here?"

"An offer…" She paused for a moment looking at Lisa as if saying 'this doesn't concern you'. Lisa sighed, bowed and went elsewhere. The brown skinned woman continued. "You're doing pretty good in the academy, and even better than that, your shunpo skills will, judging by their current level, grow to rival mine. I want you as my vice-captain, not right now of course. If you accept my offer you will be prematurely enrolled into the second squad, but will continue studying in the academy. Urahara Kisuke, a member of my squad will teach you the necessary knowledge needed for your position, and when you finish the academy you will be immediately granted the second seat." She looked at the big man standing several meters away from them. "What do you think?"

This was very embarrassing for him to be approached by someone of such high rank with such frankness. His face became a bit red while Yoruichi was speaking, partially because he couldn't take his eyes off her rather big chest and also because of said embarrassment. The young man composed himself and spoke. "What about your current vice-captain? I understand it is him?" Shirou gestured at the large man.

"He will be moved to the Onmitsukidō Corps. The leader position there suddenly became vacant and he is the only one competent enough to fill it. And while I can afford the absence of a vice-captain, I can't do the same thing for the Onmitsukidō." The woman finished her sentence with a more serious look on her face, but suddenly smiled widely and spoke. "Don't look at him like that, even if he is a big oaf his Shunpo and stealth skills are top notch, he wouldn't be one of mine otherwise."

Shirou nodded at her words and kept silently thinking about her offer. However, his silence was disturbed by the feeling of his hair being undone and falling on his shoulders. He sighed, scowling in irritation as Yoruichi gave off a girlish giggle.

"Please return it." The young man tried to say it with a calm expression but what appeared instead was a creepy, overly-sweet smile.

Yoruichi grinned that Cheshire grin of hers and waved his hair band to empathize her words. "I'll do it if you say yes."

The young man grunted something under his breath and answered. "I'll think about it."

The mocha skinned woman appeared next to him via Shunpo and gave him his hair band back. "Alright. But let me tell you something, from now on you will get offers from every division except first and fourth. With your level of Reiatsu rivaling that of a mid level captain and the fact that you don't have your own Zanpaktou having been amended you have become quite a delicious looking addition for any division." She winked at him and went to her escort. "Guys! Omaeda! We're leaving."

The four people departed from Yadomaru compound leaving Shirou blushing at Second Division's Captain's open flirting. Was that flirting? He wasn't sure, but his face responded on its own, so it must have been. And he shouldn't have forgotten about Lisa. Her current stare was unnerving at best. Strange people.

* * *

The sensation of being wet and cold awoke him again two-something years after that time. Shirou moved himself into a sitting position and looked around. It wasn't the lake he had woken up at all that time ago, to his relief, but it wasn't exactly a nice place either, with ruins and water everywhere around him. It looked like some kind of flooded ghost town, a remnant of a once living city. It shouldn't really be called town tough. All buildings were destroyed, almost like after a huge battle.

"What a pitiful place this world is, don't you think so Shinigami?" Someone spoke behind him, judging by the feminine and bored tone of the voice it was woman and she wasn't amused.

Shirou turned around carefully trying to be ready to see anything. He had already figured out that this place had to be his inner world and that woman the spirit of his newly acquired Zanpaktou. What he saw when turned around was a formless black silhouette standing on what was left of a building. She was pretty far away but her voice was still clearly audible.

"Well, I must thank you at least for one thing, Shinigami. This form is certainly better than what my previous owner gave me." Her voice was surprisingly soft in comparison to the tone she had used when speaking about his inner world, which has been like unto a hammer striking an anvil.

Only now the young man noticed how the space around her seemed strangely dark. It was as if she sucked in all the light around herself. Her silhouette moved and two yellow orbs looked at the teen. He swallowed hard, expecting something unpleasant, but she used what looked like Shunpo to appear near to him. The woman took off the hood of her cloak and Shirou was greeted with sight of bright yellow eyes, twilight black skin and hair the color of a raven's wing.

Her lips moved soundlessly, a faintly amused expression playing across her face as she watched him. When the young man was unable to hear what she said she just sighed in disappointment. "…whatever. Perhaps you are as useless as she was…"

"Hey what does that mean?" He wanted to take the woman by her cloak and lift her up but she used Shunpo again and appeared on the nearest island created by a destroyed building.

"Whatever it means is up to me to decide." She snorted and continued. "Really, you seem very childish, Shinigami… which is quite interesting considering the state of your inner world." The woman smiled enigmatically which transformed into self-satisfied grin. "Anyway, what made your world into the pitiful place it is now?"

The young man scowled furiously. This woman got on his nerves with her 'know-it-all' and 'better-than-you' attitude. "…I don't remember…" He finally forced himself to say while looking at some other place than her.

Her voice suddenly became serious and her face twisted into a scowl comparable to Shirou's. "You 'don't remember' or 'you don't want to remember'?"

Those words touched his nerve. "Listen you! I didn't come here to be taunted by a sword with an attitude! I see that god forsaken inner world of mine for the first time! And course I want to remember!" The teen yelled at the top of his lungs. He took a deep breath when he finished and stared at her intently.

The woman's eyes closed and her face took a serene expression when Shirou felt something was wrong. At this moment everything around him went black and he awoke in his bed at the Yadomaru mansion. The young man stared at the ceiling with confusion written all over his face, expecting something to happen. But nothing happened.

He blinked, twice. Still nothing happened. "Did I make her angry?" He sighed in defeat and moaned hopelessly.

* * *

Please review. All reviews are welcome, suggestions are welcome too.

Okay, about chapter. I hope you understand that Shirou was training Byakuya for at least seven days minus two days given to him to consider the offer. Hakusui and Saketsu are what Byakuya destroyed in Ichigo's soul (?) when he and Renji came to the real world to take Rukia back. Yoruichi's vice-captain is Marenoshin Omaeda, he's father of Marechiyo Omaeda and was shown in Bleach Character Book 2 Masked. And zanpakuto. I won't be revealing everything at once so don't expect to see Bankai in near future and Shikai probably won't appear for two chapters at least. Also I didn't decide on hairstyle of zanpakuto spirit yet so well… it's either something short or something like really tight ponytail.

Jikan no Ikiryou – wraith of time

Kusari o Tsunagu – linking chain

Koritora – ice tiger

Also credit goes to adrienskywalker for concept of zanpakuto repository. I didn't really ask permission to use this, but it's probably okay if I mention him here.


	3. Chapter 2: Mentor

Beta-ed by **Faroush**

* * *

Chapter 2: Mentor

* * *

Ten days after Shirou first saw his Zanpakuto spirit.

* * *

Urahara Kisuke looked at the teen in front of him. The young man was sitting on the stairs with his back turned to the older male.

The blond man sat down near him and spoke. "What's the matter, Yadomaru-san? You seem pretty distant lately."

Not receiving any answer, the man decided to look at the teen to see if he was spacing out again. When he noticed how Shirou was looking at something far away the man turned his attention to his expression. The teen was scowling, and even though Urahara had known him only for six days he knew that this was his normal expression. So what was the matter?

The man asked the first thing that came to his head after thinking for a moment about what could possibly trouble the teen before him. "Is it because of a girl…?" The question was left hanging in the air for a several minutes. However, Shirou finally reacted a little after it.

The young man's scowling lessened a little and he whispered something just barely loud enough for Kisuke to hear. "I guess one can say so…"

Urahara gestured upwards in the air and smiled goofily while speaking. "If that's the case you have to tell her your honest feelings and hope for the best!"

The teen sighed and smiled darkly. "If only it was this easy…" He chuckled after that.

"If it was this easy...?" The blond man was surprised but realization came soon enough. "Did she already reject you?" He smiled goofily again, satisfied with his conclusion.

Shirou sighed, he didn't really pay attention to what Urahara was saying but somehow was able to answer his questions. "Kind of…"

Kisuke sighed too and spoke with obvious chastising voice. "Then you have to try again! Some women like to know if you are really interested or just hunting for some easy prey."

Those words made Shirou think about what the man was talking about. Something was wrong, he just felt that both of them were talking about different things. The young man asked about it. "Huh? What are you talking about?"

The blond man smiled happy that the teen finally turned his full attention on him. "I'm talking about your love troubles of course." He said that like it was the most obvious thing in the world, expecting nothing less than agreement to his statement.

Shirou got a little irritated because of Urahara's smile and spoke with angry voice. "And I'm talking about my Zanpakuto."

Kisuke made a confused face and went silent for a few seconds then smiled apologetically. "Ah! So that's the case!" The gender of his subordinate's Zanpakuto surprised him a little; it was a rare thing for male shinigami to have a female Zanpakuto. "Is your Zanpakuto spirit female?"

"Yes." It surprised him how easily Shirou admitted it. He himself was always a little embarrassed when he talked with someone about his Zanpakuto's gender.

Urahara looked at the teen that was looking at something far away again. "My Zanpakuto is female too…" The blond blushed but then coughed into his fist and continued with a more confident voice. "She's difficult sometimes but we can always find a compromise."

The teen chuckled at those words. "It's not like that. She won't let me in my inner world, and it's been ten days already since she started it." For the first four days after the incident in his inner world he had done nothing but meditate, hoping to reconcile with his Zanpakuto. But during the last six days he had been busier and could meditate only during his free time.

Urahara's face took a serious expression and he spoke silently. "Now that's a difficult one…" He went silent for a minute after this and continued. "But, well since a Zanpakuto is part of its owner's soul I think your problem will disappear with time."

Shirou wanted to laugh at this. It seems only captains and some others knew that his Zanpakuto wasn't exactly his. Honestly it was hard to believe how slow rumors were in Soul Society. Judging by how rare it was for someone to take a Zanpakuto from repository he guessed that whole Seireitei would know instantly, but apparently he had been wrong. He thought that Yoruichi would at least tell his mentor about that, but it seemed otherwise. The teen yawned, rubbed his eyes and answered. "It's not mine, I was given one from repository."

Urahara was surprised to hear that but his brain processed information quite quickly and he answered. "Hmmmm… That would be a little tricky then. You know, we should try fighting. Pushing myself to the edge always worked for me, and you seem like the one who could benefit from such a training as well." The man finished with a welcoming smile on his face as if suggesting that they should do this training right now.

The young man was honestly surprised by the blonde's expression and asked. "What? You want to do this right now?"

Kisuke just smiled sheepishly. "Why not? We have plenty of free time, besides, if Yoruichi-san asks I'll tell her that I was training you. Furthermore having Shikai is required for vice-captain's position just like Bankai for captain's position." The man got up in the end of his speech and walked down the stairs not waiting for Shirou.

"Wait, I don't have her right now." The teen was a little distressed, how was he supposed to fight an experienced Shinigami when he didn't even have his own Zanpakuto with him?

Urahara laughed, waved his hand and spoke. "A real shinigami can materialize one from spirit particles around him or his own Reiatsu." Shirou scowled at those words. The man was challenging him; that much was clear.

* * *

"So… how do I do this?" Shirou was puzzled by Kisuke's earlier words. After they left Maggot's Nest, the man led him to the training area of the second division, the one that was not used as often as the others. The blond was ready to fight, his Zanpakuto already unsheathed, but the teen still couldn't summon his blade.

The man smiled when he saw the troubled expression of his charge. "Just concentrate on the feeling of the blade in your hand."

"I don't think it'll work." The young man's voice was full of skepticism. He scowled looking at the older male.

Suddenly Urahara gripped his blade tighter and charged at the teen with his sword ready to strike. "Trust me. It would be better for you if it worked." Shirou didn't miss sarcasm in Kisuke's words. Despite his funny outward personality the man was cold, calculating and sometimes a bit cruel.

The teen cursed, there was no way he could block a Zanpakuto with his bare hands. The only thing left for him to do was either trying to dodge or use Shunpo. He had to do all of this while trying to create his Zanpakuto from thin air of course.

Well, he could also try his skills in Hakuda but this was out of question for now. Urahara's attacks were vicious and fast. Whenever he dodged a few of them at least one would slice him a little. There was a pattern in the blonde's attacks: five slashes, piercing motion. If he could form his Zanpakuto he could be on even grounds with the man probably. The problem however was his Zanpakuto. The teen wasn't sure that it was his, sure he got all the right papers that indicated that the owner of this Zanpakuto was him, but did that creepy woman accept him as owner and master?

By now he was already cut in several places, but the bleeding wasn't as bad as he expected it to be. Kisuke's face was showing disappointment and boredom. Such expression really annoyed Shirou. He cursed rudely and used Shunpo to gain momentum and kick the blond in the stomach. The man flew back several meters from the position he had been standing at before, but Shirou wasn't done yet. Using his advanced, even for a seasoned shinigami, skills of Shunpo he delivered several more hits into the man's guts.

Urahara coughed and chuckled while speaking. "My, my… the last time I saw something of this level it was Yoruichi-san…" The man spit the blood from his mouth and stood up.

The teen yelled. "What the hell are you talking about?" Getting compared to anyone annoyed Shirou. It was like they expected him to be more than that person was. The same was with his amount of Reiatsu, it was said that only captain-commander had had that much when he had been young. But then again, how the fuck could anyone know how much reiatsu he had when he was the single oldest shinigami around, and there were none of his peers left?

To his sudden shock Shirou felt something in his hand. It was the black hilt of 'his' Zanpakuto. He grinned rather cruelly and stared at Urahara. The man straightened his back and smiled in response. His smile didn't promise anything good for Shirou, and his suspicions were confirmed when Urahara spoke. "Awaken, Benihime."

The blond man charged again and Shirou was forced to block with half formed blade of his. He groaned, feeling his hand grow numb after blocking Kisuke's strikes a few times. His attacks were undoubtedly heavy and it was rather surprising considering his build. But Shirou wasn't considered a prodigy for nothing. His prodigious skills covered everything except Kido and Hakuda. While his Kido was terrible and Hakuda was so-so, his skills of swordsmanship and Shunpo were extraordinary. Thus he could try to use Urahara's strength to his advantage.

Deflecting instead of blocking seemed to work for now, his hand wasn't getting any number and whenever Shirou deflected Kisuke's strike the man lost balance for a moment. That was enough time to attack Kisuke's vulnerable points. He slashed the man a few times, not really aiming anywhere because the blade hadn't formed completely yet. The teen needed several more seconds to be able to use his Zanpakuto fully.

As soon as the blade in his hand was complete he charged at the man. Urahara obviously didn't expect such level of swordsmanship from his young protégé and was overwhelmed for a few seconds. What the teen didn't take in account was that the blond was already in Shikai and could use some special abilities.

Shirou was surprised when Urahara muttered 'Sing, Benihime' and a red beam of energy flew directly at him. He moved his sword to deflect it, but his inexperience pulled a cruel prank on him. The teen didn't fully understand consequences of trying to redirect or block of Shikai attack with an unreleased blade, and what was left in his hands was only a part of the hilt.

Urahara saw that and stopped in the middle of his next attack. He walked up to the teen.

Looking over what was left of the blade he spoke. "Now, that is problematic. In your case it will take at least a week for the blade to restore itself."

"Fuck." The young man cursed and sat on the ground.

"Do not worry Yadomaru-san. A week is a short period of time." Kisuke spoke apologetically with a stupid smile on his face. Shirou scowled at his attitude, his list of annoying people just increased by one person.

The teen wanted to punch the man but suppressed those desires and just groaned in hopelessness. He got up and walked towards the exit of the training grounds. "I have classes at the academy soon."

* * *

When Shirou awoke in the ruins which were his inner world, it felt like he was sleeping while standing. A strong wind blew in his face making it hard not to squint. The young man looked around, searching for that woman he had met the last time he had been in this place. She silently stood on the other island of ruins. The teen got a feeling that she was immensely angry; he didn't know why he got that feeling though.

Shirou wanted to say something but didn't know what. The woman decided by herself and made him grunt in pain after using the same move Shirou used against Urahara: gaining momentum using Shunpo and punching with whole strength. "Pathetic!" She spat this while the white haired teen bended over in pain. It was one thing when you were ready to receive any punches and kicks and it was other thing when you weren't prepared. He coughed a few times and finally straightened his back.

The furious scowl on her face made it very clear that she didn't hit him for simple amusement. Her yellow eyes flashed much brighter for a moment and she yelled, almost barked even. "You dipshit! When I was just beginning to think that you are not as worthless as I thought, you just had to get me destroyed!" She made a move to hit him again but the teen grabbed her hand before it's reached its target. It made her even more furious and she used her leg to kick him in the knee. "Pathetic" She spat again. The pain couldn't compare to that of her first kick, but it was still painful nevertheless.

The young man glared at the angry woman expecting more outbursts but she just put the hood of her cloak on and Shunpo-ed to the island she was initially standing on. The teen scowled and spoke in a loud voice. "How could I have known that his attack will destroy you?"

"It's a common sense." She muttered in a voice full of venom, making Shirou shiver because of the amount of hostility he could hear in it. "You are worthless, shinigami! You are beyond worthless!"

"And what have you done that doesn't make you worthless?" Shirou yelled in anger. Now he honestly had doubts that 'his' Zanpakuto was from F-1691 section of repository. You had to have almost supernatural powers to get on his nerves this much, even Byakuya hadn't managed to get him that angry.

Judging by the change of her posture she was surprised by that question. The woman went silent for a few minutes, making the young man anxious to know what she would say. Finally she spoke silently. "Every Zanpakuto has the same potential and power, and what a person can do with his Zanpakuto depends only on said person." As she spoke her voice gradually became more and more confident and loud. "My previous master thought the same thing you think now. And she paid for that. With her life."

Shirou's eyes widened, he was surprised; did she mean that she killed her own master? The woman laughed darkly. She could read this one thought of Shirou like he had said it out loud "I did not kill her, Shinigami!" She laughed again and continued. "Individuals as dumb as you and my master would probably not understand this, but… you don't just wave your Zanpakuto around, you have to push your Reiatsu into it. You should've been taught that in the Shinigami Academy, right?"

The teen didn't have anything to respond to that. He just scowled and looked away. The woman laughed almost hysterically, but composed herself and spoke. "I'll give you another chance, Shinigami. When I have restored myself, you have to bring that man to his knees, whatever the cost may be. After that you can consider me 'your' Zanpakuto, as if my previous master never existed. And I on my part will try to help you as much as I can."

Shirou's previous scowl transformed into display of surprise. The teen half-coughed half-laughed and then spoke silently. "What do you mean 'bring that man to his knees'? Do you think that just academy student could beat a third seat shinigami with years of experience?"

"You have no other choice, shinigami." Shirou could practically picture the grin on her face while she was saying those words, even though her face was concealed by the hood and she was standing quite far away. He was sure that she had made up this whole 'bring-him-to-his-knees' thing just so she would have a reason to officially call him pathetic and worthless. The woman stood silent for several seconds, but spoke after that. "You're an interesting person, Shinigami. The darkness that plagues your soul is far greater than the one I can create."

"What do you mean?" The white haired young man was definitely confused by her words.

"...Never mind. I shouldn't have said that anyway." The woman removed her hood and smiled politely trying to persuade him to forget about her words.

Shirou groaned at her actions but nodded anyway. By his experience with his 'sisters', and Lisa especially, he knew that when women wanted to keep something to themselves they kept that 'something' to themselves. Some might have argued that women usually say the opposite of what they want, but it had always been easy for the teen to understand when a person didn't want to say something or just pretended not to. The young man sighed. It was pointless. He could just as well go and ask to take another Zanpakuto, since there was no way he could beat Urahara when he released his Benihime.

The woman appeared next to Shirou and spoke. "Truly, your world amazes me, more so than you do." Only now the young man noticed that she was roughly of his height. She muttered something under her breath and continued. "Anyway, I've set my conditions. If you prove that you are not worthless like my previous master was, then I will consider you my master."

Shirou nodded. He knew that he wouldn't be able to win against Urahara, but he had to try at least. Everything around him went black and he awoke to the lecture about Kido in the academy. It was his luck the no one who cared about rules had noticed his short nap. The young man tried to listen to lecture but was reminded of the cause of his sleep. The lecture was as boring as lying in his room and looking at the ceiling. The teen scowled, turned the lecture out and kept looking through the window until it was finished.

* * *

Two days later.

* * *

Training Byakuya was much more interesting than studying in the academy. The successor of the Kuchiki clan head position was short tempered, even by Shirou's standards. Every little comment made by the young man could make the short boy angry or annoyed. This was annoying by itself. Shirou usually didn't think too much about the way he spoke, but if he wanted to teach the young Kuchiki something then he needed to make sure they didn't get into arguments too much.

The teen wondered to which parent the boy was more similar to. Was it his mother? Or was it his father? It was probably his mother since the young man has seen the boy's father some time ago. The man was Ginrei's vice-captain. He looked much like Ginrei may have looked in his young years; the only difference was much gentler look on his face.

Shirou turned his attention to Byakuya again. Even after two weeks of practice the boy still kept crashing into the walls. It was rare but it still happened. His speed was growing but it would be a long time before he achieved the speed rivaling that of Shirou's. It pissed the black haired boy off, but he couldn't do anything else than practice and practice and practice.

When the young man thought about it, it could have been much worse. If he had been offered to train someone like Kukaku Shiba he would have certainly refused. Not only the girl was bossy as hell, but she was downright scary sometimes. He hadn't realized it until after his birthday party though. While it was amusing to watch her yelling at Kaien, he certainly didn't want to receive the same treatment.

When Shirou focused on the boy again, it appeared that the child was lying on the ground in exhaustion. The young man got up and walked to Byakuya. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing… It just… something keeps me distracted…" His voice didn't sound exactly exhausted, more like annoyed and indeed distracted.

Shirou sat on the ground near the boy and looked around cryptically. "Yeah it seems that way. The damage you've done to the walls is far greater than anything I've seen you do before. So what is it that keeps you this distracted?" The chastising tone was quite obvious, but young Kuchiki didn't seem to care or even notice.

The boy blushed mildly then scowled and spoke. "…I met a girl… in Rukongai. She was really pretty." He redirected his gaze from the sky to the wall he had crushed into five minutes ago.

Shirou chuckled at that. Urahara or Yoruichi would have certainly teased the hell out of the kid. But that wasn't that much of a reason to get so distracted. "That's all?"

The boy looked with surprise at the teen, scowled and spoke. "Yeah…"

The young man kept silent for several seconds, then chuckled and laughed. When Shirou's laugh became too loud to ignore the boy's scowl became more furious and he muttered. "…jerk."

The white haired man didn't hear that and continued to laugh. Finally he stopped and wiped the tears that gathered in corners of his eyes from laughing. "So what?"

The young man said with a serious face. While it was funny to see that 'brat' experience his probably first crush, he still needed to train him and that meant having boy's whole attention focused on training. Byakuya's face turned from a scowl of annoyance into the face full of surprise with his eyes wide open and mouth only slightly open. That surprised expression disappeared quite quickly and transformed into furious grimace of anger. "'So what?"

The black haired kid's anger didn't affect Shirou and he pushed his point. "You see a lot of pretty girls every day. Hell, half of female servants in your mansion could be called very beautiful."

The teen's words didn't affect the boy at all. "Hmpf. What a big deal that is when there're only four servants like that in the mansion."

Shirou chuckled at that. Indeed there were only four good looking women in the mansion, if you didn't count the boy's mother, but he didn't think that the young Kuchiki would point that out. Nevertheless he needed to divert boy's attention from that girl to the training. "That's not the case."

The black haired boy became only angrier because of Shirou's words. "Then what is?"

"Your hormones are. You just hit the puberty, that's only natural for you to think about girls."

Again that just seemed to fuel the boy's anger. The young man wanted to laugh at Byakuya's short temper if it hadn't been him who had to deal with it. The teen continued with a serious voice. "Go to Rukongai someday, look for that girl, and ask her out. But for now think only about training."

The anger disappeared and nothing else took its place for several moments. But then the boy huffed and spoke with his eyes closed and hands folded on his chest. "As if I could do that…"

Shirou's eyes slightly widened at that. He honestly didn't know what prevented the boy from doing what he told him. "And what makes you think that you can't?" Even if traditions were the reason, he didn't really give a damn about them.

The boy sat up and spoke calmly. "As a future Kuchiki clan head I can't just go in Rukongai and ask a commoner girl out on a date. There are rules that even I cannot break." He stood up after these words and headed towards the mansion door leading to the kitchen.

Shirou continued to sit at the same place for a while, thinking about what the boy had said. He really didn't care about rules and traditions. In his mind the Kuchiki only needed to look like noble and follow the minimum amount of rules and traditions to be good enough for the title. That of course included good manners and behaving like noble, but it wouldn't be a big deal if Byakuya had something with a girl from Rukongai. After all, Shirou himself was adopted into the noble family. Even if it was a lesser rank than the Kuchiki clan, a fact was still a fact.

He spoke in a loud voice so that the boy could hear him. "Rules… Listen, you idiot. Rules are made to be broken, stepped upon, walked over and etc. If you follow every last rule your life becomes incredibly boring and miserable… Enough of this; go back to the training."

The boy stopped in thought for a moment, but soon resumed his walk to the kitchen while speaking. "It may be so. I'll have a drink and return right away."

* * *

Next day

* * *

After the lectures in the academy had been finished, there was nothing to do there. Everyone left to their homes or dorms. Shirou did the same thing. While mansions of many noble clans were in Seireitei, the mansion of his clan was in Rukongai. The path was quite long, he had to go near the fifth division barracks and then through several districts of other facilities he didn't know purpose of and finally two districts of Rukongai until he was home. It would've been faster if he didn't have Lisa with him every time or if she would agree to use Shunpo.

It was frowned upon using any of shinigami techniques for personal goals. While he didn't care about that – Lisa did. And since he didn't want to make his life more difficult than it was he was forced to obey. He might nor care much for rules, but Lisa's nagging was a consequence even he didn't want to risk. Sometimes the teen wondered why Lisa wouldn't go with her friends, but those thoughts didn't lead him anywhere in particular.

After nearly two hours of walking they were finally home. Shirou immediately headed for his room but was stopped by Lisa's voice. "Shirou…"

Hearing a certain uncertainness instead of her usual confidence in her voice, the young man looked back. The girl bit her lower lip and spoke. "…never mind." The teen just shrugged and continued walking to his room.

The sight that greeted him in the room was not the one he had expected. Shihoin Yoruichi was sitting on his bed in relaxed position. That however was not the reason why his eyes went wide. The woman had a magazine in her hands, and not just any magazine. It was an ero-manga which Lisa so courteously had given to him for 'safe keeping'. The faces that Yoruichi was making while skipping through pages were quite entertaining to look at, but he couldn't let it continue.

Shirou jumped at the woman with his hands extended, trying to take the 'cursed thing' back. The brown skinned woman however was much faster and experienced than him and easily avoided his clumsy attempts to capture the object in her hands. After several minutes of Shirou's hunt for the magazine Yoruichi finally put it down and faced him.

The young man gasped for air, no training could compare to this intensity. "Yoruichi-san! What are you doing here?" He spoke with his brows narrowed.

The woman smiled widely and said. "What am I doing here? Waiting for you of course. I've come to tell you that you're not the only candidate for the position of my vice-captain."

Shirou sighed loudly in relief. "Then you can give this position to that person."

Yoruichi waved her hands while making a funny face which could be considered a pout but was still very different from a pout. "That doesn't satisfy me at all. You two will compete."

The brown woman looked at something behind the teen and he immediately felt that 'something' move behind him. He kicked the space behind, but something small and dressed in black jumped over his kick and already had a blade near his neck.

Yoruichi just laughed and spoke. "Enough Soifon, it's not the time yet."

Now that the person in front of him stood still Shirou could see that it was woman. Black hair, black eyes, small height and clothes of Omnitsukido member were first things he could say about her. The short woman sheathed her Zanpakuto and straightened her posture while waiting for Yoruichi's further commands. Shirou straightened too but from battle ready stance to his normal relaxed pose.

Yoruichi scowled looking at the other woman and spoke. "This is Soifon of the Fon clan. She is one of my personal guards and my disciple. You will fight her after you finish the academy." She looked at the teen with a bored face. "I understand it you have only two years left if you don't improve your Kido and Hakuda marks." She closed her eyes, sighed and stood up. "Oh, and you don't have to worry about Shikai." The woman left the room gesturing for Soifon to follow.

That comment confused Shirou. He looked back at the two leaving shinigami. Yoruichi head was turned to the left and she seemed to look at whatever was there. As soon as both women disappeared from his sight Lisa entered the room. It seems she was the one Yoruichi had been looking at. The black haired girl gazed at the magazine on his bed and muttered. "Annoying woman…"

"Is it about what you wanted to say before?" The young man asked while scratching his chin.

"No." She sat on his bed and continued. "You've been distant whole day, something happened?"

"You could say so…" Shirou said silently and sat near his sister.

Lisa looked at him questionably. Although her expression remained neutral her slightly opened lips and eyes just a bit more open than normally indicated that she was confused. The young man sighed and elaborated. "It's about my Zanpakuto. I have to beat third seat on next Wednesday otherwise I may as well think about quitting being a Shinigami."

"Troubling indeed." She whispered and looked down silently.

Shirou looked at the girl and said. "You seem more troubled than I am."

Lisa jerked her head up and did something very uncharacteristic for her. She blushed and waved her head in 'no', seeing that her brother wasn't buying that her face took more serious expression but kept a mild blush. The girl muttered under her breath just enough for teen to hear. "It really is nothing."

"Okaaaay, if you don't want to talk about it then I understand." Shirou sighed in the end of the sentence and got up. He took the magazine and put it to its rightful place: under his bed.

It seems that Lisa regained her confidence while he wasn't looking as she spoke at the same moment he turned to her. "Anyway, Kowaru-sensei wanted me to tell you to practice your Kido." The girl adjusted her glasses and left young man's room.

Shirou just fell on his bed with a loud thud. His thoughts were swirling in his head. It was hard to concentrate on something with all those things happening around him: Urahara, Zanpakuto, Yoruichi, that Soifon girl, Lisa, and finally the goddamn Kido.

He was surprised that he didn't feel anyone except Yoruichi when he entered the room. Maybe it was because his attention was focused on that stupid magazine or maybe Yoruichi took it intentionally to keep him from noticing her pupil. He needed to take a note of this since it quite interesting to know that such small thing could serve for you. A single thought stood out amongst others. He would need to fight dirty if he wanted to beat Kisuke.

…Or improve his Kido.

* * *

Review please.


	4. Chapter 3: Aftermath

**Edited by Faroush**

* * *

Chapter 3: Aftermath.

* * *

The last few days were calm for Shirou although Lisa kept being weird for the time. He practiced his kido and tried to come up with a plan to beat Urahara before the man had a chance to release his blade. Even Byakuya wasn't much of a trouble recently. While the boy's mind was still occupied with that girl he had met, his training had been progressing well enough for the teen to overlook it. To Shirou it was like the calm before the storm. And the storm would happen tomorrow without a doubt.

Every plan he had made up until now had been either stupid or impossible to do. The only one that had a chance of working was actually the most stupid one, namely "Charge straight on and don't give him a break". Stopping or even slowing for a moment would definitely be his downfall. Shirou's second hope was the only kido spell he had managed to perfect during his training in last three days: Hourin. It could potentially buy him some time, but only potentially. The teen could cast it without incarnation, but he had never tried to do that during a battle so he didn't know if he could do the same thing tomorrow.

To say that he was uneasy was like saying the Captain Commander was a little old. The young man's possible future as a shinigami would be decided by the outcome of this battle. He could still remember Yoruichi's words that he didn't have to worry about Shikai, but the teen had a hard time believing that.

Even now at 3 o'clock in the night he couldn't fall asleep, even though he had been trying to do that for the last two hours. Thus Shirou got up, put on some clothes so he wouldn't be in his underwear only and walked out of his room. The family mansion wasn't as silent as one would expect of a house with soundproof walls and doors in the middle of the night. Either his father or one of his brothers was snoring loudly. He didn't think it was female snoring because the women slept in a different part of the mansion. Then there were dogs barking outside and of course the floor that made creaking sounds when stepped upon.

Shirou made his way through the halls to the exit of the mansion. While walking to the garden the young man noticed that the nights were getting colder and colder with each passing day. The autumn had already come and it wouldn't be long before all leaves would disappear from the trees. It was weird to think that two years ago the leaves had already been gone at this time.

His reminiscing mood was broken when he accidentally stepped into a puddle of cold water. While he had put some clothing on, his feet were pretty much bare all the time. The young man cursed but walked further. Soon he noticed a silhouette of someone sitting in the garden, a slight feeling of loneliness emitting from the person. This someone had quite long black hair and that meant it could pretty much be any of his sisters. He approached the silhouette slowly and made his steps loud enough for that person to know that he was there.

"What are you doing here?" The white haired teen asked softly.

"Can't sleep. You?" Shirou nearly choked upon his next words when he realized that it actually was Lisa. With her hair always in two braids he had already forgotten that it was so long. He silently sat down near her, still trying to regain his composure.

"Answer me." Now her voice was demanding; it was nice to hear it since she had been so weird for the last few days and not like her usual self at all.

"The same reason as you. I couldn't sleep." The young man said and smiled.

The girl turned her face to Shirou and looked at him intently. The teen noticed bags under her eyes and her unnatural paleness. She must've had problems sleeping for quite some time already. Lisa turned her head back to stare at a small stone in the garden. There was nothing interesting about this stone, but she had probably found something that interested her.

Shirou spoke in a silent voice. "What the matter?"

"Nothing." Again, the same weak, uncertain voice from before had returned. The teen scowled; recently it had become one of his favorite facial expressions.

"Yeah, and the grass is blue." The young man's scowl disappeared after those words. It wasn't his place to judge his sister if Lisa didn't want to tell him what was on her mind.

"Really?" The girl spoke with a mocking tone in her voice.

Shirou's brow twitched. Just when he had been ready to let it go she just had to put more coal into the furnace that was his irritation. "What kind of question is that?"

"Well, I do wear glasses so there must be something wrong with my eyesight." If the teen hadn't been so sure that it was Lisa near him, he could have sworn that he was talking to Yoruichi. Even if their voices were different, the way she said those words was just like Yoruichi's.

Shirou's brow didn't stop twitching but he tried to calm himself down and spoke. "Just tell me what's wrong."

Lisa sighed and slowly said. "I was invited into the 8th Division by Captain Kyoraku. I would be given a seat."

The young man was confused by this. He saw no reason for her to behave like that because of this. "So why are you like this then?"

Shirou's sister turned her head away from him completely. Before that she simply hadn't been looking at him; now she was facing the opposite direction so the teen couldn't see her face. The black haired young woman mumbled. "Girl thing." Shirou groaned in response to this. He couldn't even hope to understand her current behavior.

There was only one question left that he wanted to ask. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm not you, so I won't get another chance like this. I have to be a fool to say no." Her voice seemed a little bitter, but the young man wasn't sure.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Shirou didn't know what to say or what to ask, Lisa probably simply didn't want to say anything else. When it became too cold and too quiet for him to sit in the garden the young man got up and left without saying anything.

* * *

The next morning Shirou felt like he had been out drinking the whole night. After he had left Lisa sitting outside he still hadn't been able to get any sleep. The thoughts of the next day and his sister's behavior hadn't left his mind. To his irritation the weather was perfect. His mood would've been better if there had been at least one cloud in the sky to block the light of the damned sun from getting in his eyes, but…

The young man somehow dragged himself out of the bed and went to the kitchen to get something to eat before heading to the 2nd Division quarters. Without Lisa he was free to use Shunpo and thus got there fairly quickly. Then he had to wait for Urahara - again. It seemed that the man was quite a heavy sleeper and often late.

The whole time his mind was cycling around Her conditions. The woman was even more confusing than Lisa was and much more dangerous as well. The strength She possessed was obvious. Maybe Shirou was wrong and Her whole behavior was just an intimidation act, but his mind usually didn't send wrong danger signals.

Unexpectedly a familiar silhouette caught his eye. It was that girl that he would have to fight someday just to amuse one brown skinned woman. He couldn't be completely sure, but the hairstyle and stiffness of her gait strongly reminded him of the girl. She was without her face mask but too far away for the young man to see any details of her face. Shirou considered approaching and speaking with her, but tossed that thought away when he saw Urahara.

Kisuke was walking lazily and yawning while doing so. The girl saw the blond too and walked to him angrily. That surprised the teen so he continued to watch instead of walking towards Urahara. The black haired girl scolded the older man but he just laughed it off. The girl got furious but the blond had already seen Shirou and brushed her off. He walked towards his protégé while waving his hand. Yoruichi's student saw him as well, but instead of greeting him she scowled and turned towards the exit.

"So, are you ready to continue your training?" The older man asked with a bored expression on his 's face was grim and Urahara didn't miss it, but nevertheless decided not to bring the matter up.

"Yeah…" The teen's voice was weak and uncertain. The blond looked at his subordinate both suspiciously and in concern. However, he was shocked when he saw the young man's eyes. While his voice had been uncertain his eyes were like hardened steel. The blond didn't have any ideas what this was all about, but he was put at ease since it meant that the young man would concentrate on the fight.

Shirou was thinking over all those plans he had made and immediately scrapped them. Standing before Urahara seemed to clear his head from any unnecessary thoughts. The young man sighed, he was itching to get this finally over with. This whole ordeal was as irritating as it was troublesome. He needed to finish this.

* * *

Several minutes later

* * *

Urahara was a little intimidated by the teen's gaze. Never before had he seen something even distantly alike. When Yoruichi was serious her eyes were not like this, when he himself was serious his eyes were also completely different. The young man's eyes were too intense, too angry to even look back at them. There also was hint of insanity in his gaze, only a small one but enough to make him very, very careful. He was sure that whatever Shirou was going to do would hurt as hell if he succeeded.

The man gripped his still unreleased Benihime tighter and prepared to attack, but was surprised to find himself attacked instead. Shirou was using the same Shunpo and Hakuda combination he had used during their first fight. Today it was at least two times faster though. His senses couldn't even register the moment the white haired youth had appeared in front of him. All he could do was to rely on his fighting instincts and put the blade where the young man's kick was most likely to land.

Shirou on the other hand was angry at his Zanpakuto. His mind wasn't even concentrating on the battle. All his thoughts were a raging storm of anger and fury. The teen's senses returned to him when he felt his foot connecting with Kisuke's stomach while passing the cutting edge of the man's sword in millimeters at the same time. He didn't want to lose this opportunity and promptly punched the blonde's face.

Urahara was forced to quickly adapt to the change of pace in the fight. He had been hoping for something like their first fight a week ago where he had managed to fully dominate the Shinigami trainee. This however was surprising; Shirou had managed to pull off Shunpo close to Yoruichi's level. The young man kept attacking with both his Zanpakuto and using Hakuda moves, mixing them with the use of Shunpo and kept Kisuke from going into Shikai. His speed had definitely increased. More than it should have in such a short time.

For now Shirou was pretty content with his attacks, he had managed to keep Urahara too occupied to release Benihime. All that he needed to do now was to tire him out. Unfortunately the teen didn't take in account that Kisuke was skilled swordsman as well. In their previous fight he hadn't shown much of his skills, but after the young man's initial attack the blonde seemed to become even more serious than he already was. The man had gotten over his surprise and was now fighting on a level of swordsmanship that was comparable to that of a captain.

Soon Shirou was pushed back by the older man and this moment was what Urahara had needed to go into Shikai. The teen cursed and leaped back while trying to think of a solution for this problem. None of his plans had included Kisuke releasing his sword as their main goal had been to stop him from doing so. And the Kido spell he learned was only meant for delaying the man so Shirou could stop him from doing what he had done anyway.

Technically he still had a chance to win, but it was a very slim one. If the blond didn't use much of his Shikai attacks the teen could try to overpower him with Shunpo again. If not then he needed to be more than just careful. For now he only knew about one of the man's attacks and it wasn't exactly pleasant memory.

"I don't know what has gotten into you, Yadomaru-san, but I don't intend to get tossed around like this." The blond's voice was somewhat menacing. The young man however didn't notice it. He kept running through possibilities to win in his head.

Constantly looking at his opponent's every move, Urahara was surprised when the teen started circling around him. Kisuke couldn't understand what Shirou was planning to do but decided to be very cautious. He had seen what his protégé could do and he couldn't afford letting his guard down when the young man in front of him was about to do something unexpected again.

_'It all comes down to experience.'_ The white haired teen thought. _'No matter how much I train, I just forgot to cast the freaking Kido spell.'_ He knew that the moment Urahara had released his sword was the moment he had lost. A part of his mind was telling him to stop this foolishness, but Shirou ignored the little voice and attacked the blond man again Kisuke seemed to be in deep thought because he reacted a fraction of a second slower that he should have. That gave the young man an opportunity that was instantly shattered when the older male instead of blocking or deflecting his strike somehow dodged it and slammed his fist into Shirou's stomach.

The teen frowned but stood in place, ignoring Urahara's fist. He quickly took the man's hand and tried to slash at his chest. The older man didn't have time to escape from attack or block it, so the only thing left for him was to make the teen stop it himself. He swung Benihime so that the white haired youth would have to change the direction his blade if he wanted to keep his stomach intact.

Shirou blocked the incoming blade, spat a curse and jumped back several meters. He straightened his posture and thought of a possibility of tiring the blond out. He knew that he had more Reiatsu than the other man and having more Reiatsu always meant having greater stamina. The man however shattered this opportunity with that special ability of his.

"Sing, Benihime." Those two words made the young man's eyes widen instantly. He tried to escape with Shunpo but the blast was too fast for him to dodge. Even if it was essentially non-lethal, the blast still greatly damaged his left hand and rendered it useless for the remaining battle.

The teen was already frowning as much as he could and his expression didn't change, but his body visibly tensed. In a last attempt to win he thought that maybe he had just been too careful and charged straight at Urahara. His swings seemed wild to the blond, but there was a thought behind it. Shirou almost never fought with one hand only and he could compensate the absence of technique and strength with increased speed.

This strategy worked well for him. Kisuke was unable to block all incoming strikes much like Shirou hadn't been able to in their first battle. The blond smiled rather darkly and spoke. "You're a dangerous person, Yadomaru-san."

The teen didn't respond to this, more like he didn't have a luxury to respond. Another 'Sing, Benihime.' grabbed all his attention when he had to dodge it. The young man coughed because of the dust that collision of Urahara's blast and ground created.

The dust cleared and Shirou couldn't see the blond anywhere near him. He tensed when he felt a tip of the blade touch the back of his neck and the voice that followed. "I think it's enough for today. Sheath your Zanpakutō, Yadomaru-san."

In all honesty, Kisuke feared that the teen might ignore it and swing his blade at him again instead of sheathing it. He felt tired and sore, his hands were numb and his legs weak. And although he still could take the teen out with firing one blast of red energy after another it would probably make Shirou an acquaintance of Unohana Retsu or her vice-captain.

To the blonde's joy the young man did as he was told and turned around. The white haired man's eyes were almost burning holes through Urahara. The man had never felt the glare as intense as this before. "Well that was tough…" Kisuke tried to brighten the mood with something but it quickly drowned in an ocean of hostility coming from the teen.

Shirou turned away and spoke quietly. "I have classes in the academy soon…" With that he walked away, not looking back even once.

"Not even saying goodbye or something…" The blond muttered to himself.

While slowly leaving the training ground Shirou entertained a thought of using his favorite Shunpo move and punching the older male's lights out, but… he 'did' have classes at the academy soon and he had to somehow treat his left hand. Bandaging it would the best choice for now.

The thought of meeting Her now made the young man shudder. He couldn't even imagine what She would probably do to him. No, he knew that She would probably start with but not what would follow after that. The sarcastic look and a 'pathetic' said with a disgusted tone in Her voice would be the start of course. Then She would follow with either a kick or a rant about how much of a failure he was.

Shirou sighed, trying to chase all those thoughts out of his head. It was a particularly hard thing to do considering all the circumstances. His mind was one big whirlpool of negative thoughts at the moment. As he made his way back home, he didn't notice that Omnitsukido girl he was going to fight in due time nor the way she stared at him.

* * *

The rest of Shirou's day was clouded by his own anger and frustration. He was avoided at the academy, he snapped at Byakuya's foolishness, argued with Lisa and did some other stupid things. Losing to Urahara was his own doing and he blamed himself but couldn't help lashing out at other people. Now he was trying to sleep, but it wasn't an easy thing to do. He knew that he almost always met Her when he slept and now that he knew that the encounter wouldn't be a pleasant one he didn't want to end up in his inner world. If the teen somehow knew how to escape meeting Her, he wouldn't have to worry about sleeping. Nevertheless he just couldn't lie on the bed without getting any sleep, tomorrow's schedule was already packed and the young man couldn't afford being half asleep during something important.

He kept analyzing his mistakes during the fight and came to the conclusion that he simply didn't have enough battle experience. There were many times he could've capitalized on Kisuke's mistakes but hadn't done so. Knowing all this Shirou could only blame himself and tried to calm down.

The lack of the battle experience was the one thing he couldn't change for now. He would have to spar with someone during his free time. The obvious choice would be either Kaien or Lisa, but he knew more people who wouldn't say no if he asked.

He would need to try to adapt to their pace though. If he could fight almost on par with a third seat officer than he would probably decimate a normal academy student. The good thing was that most people he was friends with in the academy were not these thoughts in his head he somehow managed to fall asleep.

* * *

Shirou sighed. He had expected to wake up in this place. Nothing had changed from the last time he had been here. …at least nothing he noticed. The landscape around him was still pretty much ruined. The young man blinked in surprise. Something had changed. The water level seems to have receded, and not only that… He could see something like smoke or steam rising from some spots around him.

The teen waited patiently, now that he was here it was no use trying to escape the 'fated' meeting. He sat on a piece of rubble and thought about her behavior. It was so bizarre… She changed her mood from anger to happiness in mere moments.

The young man blinked as She appeared in front of him without any visible signs of using Shunpo. She looked at him without making any sounds and then sighed in disappointment. The woman spoke slowly as if to make the teen pay more attention to her words.

"What a wonderful way to show me how stupid you are…" She started walking around the young man while looking at her own feet. "I would've never expected something like that. Honestly, you had all the chances to win when that man was standing behind you… but nooooooo you had to chicken out and give up. What can I say? …Pathetic." She didn't even make her voice sarcastic in the end, which was strange considering her character. … or maybe not. But the fact that she didn't punch him was even stranger.

The woman stopped in front of Shirou after walking four full circles around him. She looked at him as if examining his face and grinned. She turned her back on him and walked ahead. "Come with me…"

She started to use Shunpo to move from one of the destroyed buildings to another while Shirou was forced to do the same. The woman guided him to a larger than normal ruin with walls that seemed to be cut by some Reiatsu infused attacks as well as blades.

Shirou looked at the walls of the destroyed building. No matter how he looked at the walls, it was useless. He couldn't see anything unusual besides what he already could see.

"Anyway, what I mean to show you here is that you are too interesting to abandon. So I'll stay here but you'll have to work three times harder than before to even make me consider saying my name again."

* * *

Review please and thanks for reading.

This chapter is the last one of the 'prologue' chapters. Expect more Shirou x Soifon from this point onwards, but don't expect them to immediately love each other.


	5. Interlude 1: Wrong Impressions

**Beta-ed by Faroush**

* * *

Interlude 1: Wrong Impressions.

* * *

Two days after Shirou's fight with Urahara

* * *

Soifon and Yoruichi were in the second division headquarters. Yoruichi was lazily reading some kind of report while Soifon was sitting near the Shihoin woman just like her duty as the head of the personal guard required.

The brown-skinned woman's eyes looked above the paper at her so-called guard. It wasn't like she couldn't protect herself, but being the head of the Shihoin clan required her to have at least one guard. Her clan was very traditional and it was already a wonder that she, a woman, had been allowed to take the place of the clan head.

Her eyes kept examining the girl. Lately Soifon had been frowning a lot more than usual. "What's the matter? You don't look like your usual self." She asked the girl in a teasing voice.

"Yoruichi-sama!" The black haired girl yelled in surprise and bowed her head in shame. "Forgive me, I was thinking… I think I may not be able to beat that guy… His speed is too much…" The volume of her voice dropped and she almost whispered the last words. The girl's eyes looked lost, but her gaze quickly hardened and she yelled again. "Please train me!"

Yoruichi blinked in surprise; normally Soifon would be too embarrassed to shout this loud. Then she smiled and said. "Didn't you say Shirou had a big trouble at keeping up with Kisuke when he released his blade?"

"Yes, but my shikai is heavily reliant on speed." The girl looked down embarrassed at admitting this.

The older woman raised an eyebrow. Soifon had never shown or talked about her shikai to her. Yoruichi herself never knew a zanpakuto which shikai would be useless if the opponent was faster than its owner.

"I suppose it's fair to help you a little, if it's the way the things are…" The older woman spoke with a slightly troubled expression on her face.

Soifon looked a bit surprised, but pleased nonetheless. It felt nice to see the fire in the girl's eyes, for once Soifon was pursuing something other than her idol. Overlooking the fact that she was only doing it to impress her idol, Yoruichi felt rather pleased.

The violet haired woman grinned as an interesting idea came to her mind. She spoke with a bright smile on her face, showing her good mood. "…but on one condition. You have to get to know Shirou… and no buts."

Soifon scowled a little but nodded in confirmation. "As you wish, Yoruichi-sama."

The older woman's face immediately changed into a frown. No matter how many times she kept telling her, the girl just wouldn't stop calling her 'Yoruichi-sama'. It annoyed her a lot because she couldn't stand formalities and for some other reasons as well.

"Go find him then for today." She stood up and walked towards Soifon. The brown skinned woman patted the girl's head in an affectionate way and continued. "And stop with all those 'Yoruichi-sama this, Yoruichi-sama that'… It's really annoying."

The girl blushed and kept her head down, trying to hide it. Yoruichi thought it was pretty cute, but no matter how cute a girl could be, she still preferred men… probably much to Soifon's displeasure.

* * *

The same evening Soifon was trying to find that Shirou guy. It seemed he wasn't with Urahara today, nor was he at the academy. She heard that he was tutoring Ginrei Kuchiki's grandson Byakuya. He wasn't there either. Then she went to his family's mansion and only servants were there. This time she was luckier since they told her that he might be at the Shiba's mansion.

So here she was, standing in front of the gates to the mansion. She knocked lightly in a polite manner. It was considered rude to knock too loudly or too forcefully. A servant opened the gates and she was escorted to see Kaien Shiba.

The guy she had been looking for was indeed with the Shiba as she was told. They were fighting… no, they were sparring. It was a more accurate thing to say since Yadomaru's speed wasn't at the level he had shown while fighting Urahara. The servant called out his master, and the attention of both participants of the spar was quickly drawn away from it.

The white haired young man looked surprised to see her here. It was confirmed when he spoke. "You're that girl… what was your n…"

He however was cut off by her. "I don't think we were introduced. My name's Soifon."

He rubbed the side of his neck and smiled awkwardly. "I'm Shirou Yadomaru."

The Shiba near him spoke too. "And I'm Kaien Shiba."

"I already know." It seems her words were somewhat cold and rude since Shiba scowled a little.

"So what do you want?" The white haired teen probably understood that she was here to see him.

"Please continue for now if you wish. I need your full attention and you can't provide it at the moment." Soifon tried to appear somewhat well mannered, because she felt a little guilty for Kaien's reaction.

Yadomaru shrugged his shoulders and looked at the black haired teen. Kaien nodded and they returned to their earlier business. Soifon stood near the wall that separated the training grounds from the rest of the mansion and watched their battle.

The white haired teen didn't use the speed he had shown before at any point of the fight. As Soifon noticed that also didn't unsheathe his zanpakuto, the girl's puzzlement was soon replaced by slight anger for not noticing it sooner. What Yadomaru practiced at was Kido.

With uncomfortable movements and slow incarnations he tried to fire his spells at Kaien while the older teen attacked. Perhaps it was the reason that Shirou's speed was slower, perhaps not… She didn't know his fighting style and his abilities good enough to state something like this with confidence.

Also it seemed that his reiatsu was higher than she had speculated in his fight against Urahara. Her eyes kept tracking his every movement. Shirou was using unnecessary gestures while casting Kido spells and it caused him to make mistakes in his incarnations. She wasn't very experienced in Kido herself so she couldn't tell if he had hopes of improving or not.

* * *

Meanwhile

* * *

Kaien looked at the girl that was watching their spar and then turned his eyes to the person he was attacking. His friend was good at dodging; he had to admit at least this much. That however kept the white haired teen too distracted to cast the kido spell he was preparing. "I think that Soifon girl likes you." The black haired young man said with a smirk on his face.

"Huh?" Shirou blinked and missed a punch coming to his stomach.

"Look how she's keeping her eyes solely on you." Shiba kept speaking, he perfectly knew that the younger teen considered these words like something similar to a taunt. Shirou scowled and grit his teeth.

"…and her greeting too, she was pretty cold towards me. You on the other hand…" The black haired young man gave another glance to the girl and nearly missed friend's kick.

Feeling that he was dominating for this moment Shirou spoke with a tone full of skepticism. "Bullshit. We've seen each other… what? Two? …three times perhaps? And you think that she likes me?" He paused to inhale and continue his attack. "I'd say you're delusional."

Kaien smiled widely while dodging the younger teen's attacks. "C'mon, it's love at first sight… Aren't you even a little bit romantic?"

The young man was disappointed; Shirou's expression didn't change at all. "Romantic, yes. Delusional, no." His answer disappointed him even more.

They kept exchanging blows for a few minutes, both occasionally glancing at the girl standing by the wall. Finally Kaien spoke again. "Come to think of it… she's pretty cute… why don't you go for her?"

Shirou smirked back at him probably knowing his weak spots. "Why don't you?"

And his weak spots were strong willed women. "I prefer more… domestic type of women." Kaien sighed and continued. "Someone blunt and strict like Kukaku and will conflict with my personality." Women like his sister really got on his nerves, Kukaku wasn't an exception, but he 'could' tolerate her because she was his sister and he spent enough time around her to get used to it.

The younger man's smirk grew wider at that and he said. "…I'll keep quiet this time."

"Now you're just insulting me!" The black haired teen yelled cheerfully, while suppressing his laugh. This discussion was just so ridiculous that he just couldn't keep it to himself.

"What's so funny? Share with me." Shirou's confused and somewhat annoyed voice only made it worse.

"Well you see…" He couldn't finish however, because Soifon walked towards them and asked without waiting for his next words.

"Are you finished?" The girl's voice was too serious for him. It seemed it was one of those things that made only you laugh, and others think it wasn't even a joke.

"It seems so… this idiot is in no shape to continue." The white haired young man glanced at the laughing body that was rolling on the ground.

* * *

"So what did you want to talk about?" Shirou looked down at the girl while speaking. Even for a girl she was rather short, and it wasn't something she liked. The black haired girl frowned and looked somewhere else than the guy above her.

"Yoruichi-sama ordered me to get to know you." Her little frown didn't disappear from her face while she said it.

"Eh?" The young man looked at Soifon while wrinkling his brows in surprise. "…and you're going to do whatever she says?" Soifon noticed that his voice was a little irritated. She wondered why but didn't find the answer.

"Yes. Is it even a question someone with a head on his shoulders would ask?" She asked not understanding why he felt that way.

The teen pinched the bridge of his nose and gave an uncertain answer. "Errr… Yes?"

Soifon wanted to sigh but it wasn't something she'd do in front of just anyone. "Forget it."

"If you say so, but you better get to the point." By the expression he had made the girl could guess that Shirou had a hard time conversing with her.

"I already said what I wanted." The black haired girl felt a little pleasure because she made it difficult for the teen. Although she felt that she was forgetting the purpose of their conversation.

"What was that?" The young man spoke ignorantly in a loud and confident voice.

His tone didn't affect Soifon, although it seemed that it wasn't the purpose to begin with. "Yoruichi-sama ordered me to get to know you."

The white haired teen leaned onto the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. "And why would I want to do this?"

She kept silent, not knowing the answer to this question. But before she could figure something out the young man spoke again. "Oh well, let's go somewhere… more comfortable."

The conversation was getting awkward, that much she could tell. Shirou probably did the right thing saying that they needed to go somewhere else. They could also think about what they wanted to say while going there.

The girl was walking a little behind him while the young man was leading the way. The teen scratched his head and looked around. Suddenly he changed directions and took a left turn. If she remembered correctly, the new path that he chose was leading to 'red lights' district. Soifon wondered why he was leading her there.

"Yadomaru-san, do you know where exactly you are going?" She asked with a concerned tone in her voice.

The young man turned his face to her and looked at the girl with stupid expression on his face. He scratched his cheek and asked. "…no? Why are you asking?"

"That's the red lights district ahead." Soifon motioned with her head into its direction while looking at the teen near her curious how he would react.

Shirou fully turned to her and frowned while thinking, probably trying to guess if she was lying or not. After a moment he spoke calmly. "Seriously? …maybe I should've taken the right turn."

"Why did you turn that way then?" Soifon felt the conversation getting awkward again and it was something she didn't want to happen. She decided to change the way their talk was going depending on the answer.

Shirou turned around and walked back, he looked out of the alley making sure that that person wasn't there. "I saw someone I'd rather not talk to right now."

* * *

After twenty or so minutes, they arrived at a small restaurant and Yadomaru offered her to eat something saying that it was easier for him to talk with someone unfamiliar while he was eating. Soifon noted that he sounded like some kind of glutton saying this. Nevertheless, it didn't concern her… yet.

"So, how do we start this?" The white haired teen asked rubbing the side of his neck and looking at the menu.

"I do not know."

"Hmmm…" He turned his eyes at Soifon and looked at her with questioning look, but it didn't last long. His gaze turned back to the menu and he finally responded. "What do we have in common? Mmmm, maybe… you know Urahara Kisuke? What do you think of him?"

"He's lazy, incompetent and irresponsible man. He's late for his duty most of the time." The girl's answer seemed like it was drilled in her.

"True… for the most part anyway. He's strong, though." Shirou spoke while showing the waiter what he wanted. She herself had already ordered her food.

"Just because he has beaten you?" Soifon smiled a little at that but she was a bit annoyed at the way he said that. It made her somewhat angry that a guy with such an attitude was stronger than her. He was stronger than Urahara too, that she was certain of, the blond man just had more experience, and yet the teen in front of her was so humble… it was too damn infuriating.

Shirou's voice stopped that line of thoughts, and the black haired girl was paying him attention once again. "Not only… he's calm all the time when he fights me, even if there is fear in his eyes, he's still calm." The girl frowned at his words and at the respect visible in them.

"I don't know about that, I have never fought him." The tone she responded with was rather cold she realized, but what was said was already said and she couldn't change that.

She looked at the young man to see if it made him angry, but oddly enough he seemed more focused instead of annoyed. "You seemed pretty pissed the other day… what was that about?"

"Which day exactly?" Soifon said and looked into the window wondering just what exactly he was talking about.

"So that's pretty common occurrence then?"

"Sorry I wasn't listening." She shrugged, shaking wandering thoughts off.

"Never mind then. On to the next subject. What about Yoruichi?" Shirou spoke while taking his chopsticks to eat the food that the waiter just brought.

The girl gave him a sharp and angry glare and almost yelled. "Yoruichi-sama?"

The young man looked up from his food, shrugged and spoke. "Whatever… so what about her? I think she's pretty annoying. She comes to me, practically demands me to be her vice-captain, wants me to fight you and train with Urahara and even more: expects me to be pleased about it."

"I… agree, she has a childish side to her…" Soifon was reluctant to admit it, but Yoruichi annoyed even her sometimes.

"You seem… hmmmm…" He stopped and his head whipped to the left to look in the window. "Isn't that her?"

Soifon didn't have time to react as the brown skinned woman was already sitting near the white haired male with her arm slung over his shoulder, which caused Shirou to have an unpleasant expression on his face. "Yo, kids! Have you two been getting along?"

"Yoruichi-sama!" The young girl shouted in surprise at both her sudden appearance and the position the older woman took.

"Soifon, find Kisuke and give this to him, I'll talk with Shirou for a bit." Yoruichi gave the black haired girl an envelope and waited while she got up, bowed her head and left.

* * *

Lisa was quite annoyed with her so-called sibling. Not only he didn't get obvious clues but he also messed her thoughts up. For the largest part of her not so long life in Seireitei she had respected only one person – Ukitake Juushiro, the sole reason she had even thought of becoming a shinigami.

When Shirou appeared in the lives of the Yadomaru clan members almost two years ago, he instantly changed every established unspoken rule of their family, beginning with that there were no shinigami in the clan and ending with 'the father speaks only with two of his eldest daughters and sons, except for his personal servant'. Unknowingly he also had managed to change the hearts of those around him: her own as well as her other siblings, even her father's.

Lisa chuckled, thinking how she had been unimpressed with Shirou when she had first seen him. He had looked like a normal commoner. Well, almost normal, because his coloration could be never called normal. Second impressions formed much later. Eventually she learned that he had a short fuse too, but unlike herself could be easily annoyed by just about anything, given the action was performed enough times.

And talking about annoying and irritating, recently she became easily annoyed at the sight of or even word about Shihoin Yoruichi. Lisa knew that that meant only one thing and yet she was still reluctant to admit that she was jealous. That reluctance fueled by her inborn stubbornness made her mood worse and worse with each passing day.

The girl was going along the wide street of one of the Rukongai districts when she saw a flash of familiar white hair moving into one of the side alleys. She saw a short black haired girl follow Shirou closely behind. Lisa remembered her leaving her brother's room with Yoruichi once. The young woman tried to remember where the path was leading and stormed after them with horror, understanding just where he was taking that girl.

She quickly realized that they had already disappeared in the huge crowd of commoners and shinigami. The girl huffed in irritation and continued looking for the two of them. After half an hour, she was back to square one, i.e. the entrance to the red lights district. She decided to try looking in another direction and left to the opposite alley.

This time her search was more fruitful, she saw Shirou's distinctive white hair at some kind of a restaurant. He seemed to be sitting there talking with someone. She came closer but stopped in her tracks when she saw the other person.

"…damn." Lisa cursed suppressing the urge to hit someone. The purple hair, the brown skin and finally white haori made it perfectly sure that it was Shihoin Yoruichi. "That woman…" She hissed, turned around, and started slowly walking away with a frown on her face

* * *

Review please, as always.

Lisa was cuntblocked... kind of. I feel sorry for her... kind of again. She's one of my favorites in Bleach.


	6. Chapter 4: Segments of…

Beta-ed by Faroush

* * *

Chapter 4: Segments of…

* * *

Shirou stretched his limbs, readying himself for the fight he had been preparing for almost two years. Soifon stood ten meters away from him and did nothing; it seemed she was pretty confident. He had realized it only recently, but he had never seen her fight before, and it was completely opposite for her. The girl often watched him train with Urahara and probably had most of his moves memorized by now.

It didn't mean that he didn't have anything surprising for her up his sleeve. He was absolutely positive that the girl hadn't seen the full extent of his speed. And yet he was not confident in his win, while the speed would give him an edge in the fight, all her abilities were unknown to him. An annoying voice in the back of his mind kept telling him that if he only asked to see Soifon fight she would've agreed, but the same voice always added that he was too much of a pussy to ask her that.

Shirou's and Soifon's eyes met for a brief moment and they both looked away uncomfortably. He was embarrassed at being caught staring at her, and Soifon was… well, he didn't know yet and maybe never would.

Finally Yoruichi and Urahara appeared. The woman wore that smile of hers and Urahara surprisingly looked half-asleep. It was really strange considering it was already six in the evening. Shirou dropped the matter entirely out of his mind, trying to make it as clear as possible.

He wasn't completely sure if it would help him as much as he hoped but he did need to stay as focused as possible. He glanced at Yoruichi again; she was talking with the blond. Shirou sighed, remembering what she had told him two years ago, after he nearly stumbled into the red light district with Soifon.

_"Yo, kids! Have you been getting along?"_

_The young man tried to not show his displeasure at being in such close proximity with the source of half of his current troubles. Her hand draped over his shoulder didn't help it at all and only added embarrassment at such familiarity to the displeasure he was feeling._

_"Yoruichi-sama!"_

_Shirou didn't pay any attention to Soifon's surprised scream, trying to not choke when Yoruichi leaned on him. The people around were giving him weird looks, obviously knowing who the woman was and wondering who HE was._

_"Soifon, find Kisuke and give that to him. I'll talk with Shirou for a bit."_

_When Soifon had disappeared from sight Yoruichi finally lifted her arm from the young man's shoulder and changed her seat to the one the black haired girl had been occupying. Shirou sighed finally feeling less stressed out._

_"So, what did you two talk about?"_

_"Nothing much… are you really here to ask just that?" The young man cocked his eyebrow at the woman._

_"No, but that's what I want to know now." She gave him a goofy grin and entwined her fingers._

_"Yeah? Well, as I said - nothing much."_

_"Hmmm." She looked thoughtful for a moment but quickly dismissed whatever it was on her mind. "Nah, whatever…"_

_"Why did you want her to get to know me?"_

_"Ah, that question." The purple haired woman said as if she was waiting for this question from the beginning."Heh, she has those sick ideas about me, and she idolizes me because of my 'strength'." The dark skinned woman air-quoted 'strength' and chuckled softly._

_"…what sick ideas? Don't tell me…" The young man's eyes widened and he looked sideways, blushing a little. He always was a bit uncomfortable with sexual topics, and while he could give Byakuya a love advice anything more was already out of his skill range._

_"Yeah, those sick ideas… Hmmm, maybe it's not like that, I can't really tell after all."_

_"So you wanted me…?" Shirou pressed the woman to return to the topic and stared at her intently as he put his hands on the table and entwined his fingers too._

_"No, you got me wrong. I wanted you to show her that there are other people who could be admired. As far as I know you hold Kisuke in fairly high regard." The woman leaned back in her seat._

_"Well yes, he IS my mentor for the time being."_

_"See what I mean? For her I'm the centre of the universe. Whatever Yoruichi-sama says is to be taken as words from god himself." The young man raised an eyebrow at that. He suspected it from the moment Soifon said that it was Yoruichi who 'ordered' her to get to know him. But he didn't suspect that it was THAT bad._

_"Maybe she admires you because she thinks you are the strongest female in Seireitei?"_

_"Maybe, maybe not. Unohana is far more experienced and only the captain-commander could compare to her in strength. Kirio is quite strong too, there are rumors that she'll be promoted." That raised a question: what was higher position than captain? Maybe the Central 46? Or something else?_

_"Promoted?" When he finished his word, his mouth was still hanging in form of an O._

_"Never mind that, as for why I disrupted your little date – I will be taking over Byakuya's training from this day on."_

_"Eh? Oh well, that makes it easier for me." The young man smiled contently and leaned back on his seat as well. Not even noticing that he was repeating the same things the brown skinned woman did._

_"Why?"_

_"I have to train myself as well, don't I?" He smirked._

Apparently, Soifon had made almost no progress at being less focused on Yoruichi while Shirou had become a little more than a bit interested in the girl. She was definitely his type. Her lithe body, her fierce looking face, eyes, even her voice often occupied his mind from time to time.

Shirou shook his head trying to clear it again and turned his attention to the approaching Yoruichi. The woman smiled and looked first at Soifon and then him. She raised her hand and yelled. "You may begin!"

Immediately, without giving him much time to decide his course of action, the black haired girl shunpo-ed to him. Even though he was a little surprised at her speed that almost rivalled his own the young man managed to block her first strike.

Shirou ducked under the second strike and tried kicking Soifon's leg to drop her on the ground. Unfortunately, she seemed to be far more proficient in Hakuda than he was. Instead of successfully kicking her leg he received a punch right into his face. The girl followed with a slash to his stomach, but the young man deflected her blade with his own.

After a minute of exchanging blows and probing each other's defences he noticed that the girl was very careful, too careful for it to be her usual fighting style. Every time he tried attacking her, she switched to defences right away. It spoke a lot of her own strength and Shirou was quite glad that he wasn't the only unconfident one here.

A small smirk slowly crept on his face. It was time to increase the pace.

The young man took his Zanpakuto with a more aggressive grip and charged rather recklessly but with far greater speed. Soifon didn't even get a chance to blink as the blade passed mere inches from her head. Shirou cussed, redirecting his sword. His current speed was too much for him and he had trouble with coordination.

In the meantime the girl tried to kick his knee and almost succeeded, but had to dive her head. It was quickly becoming the same thing repeated again and again. Shirou would attack, Soifon would dodge while counterattacking but would be forced to dodge again.

The young man shunpo-ed to the edge of training ground hoping to sort his thoughts and work out a decent plan. He was breathing heavily; it was easily the toughest of the fights he had fought so far. Training obviously didn't count as he didn't push himself to such limits as he did right now. And fight with Urahara… was a joke, he had no chance after the man released Benihime.

_'Don't disappoint me, Shinigami. She has only a fraction of your strength… or your potential.'_ Shirou scowled, as if fighting wasn't enough… She just had to crawl into his head and start preaching about his abilities.

He briefly wondered if he could ever gain Shikai, much less Bankai, with a spirit like this inhabiting his Zanpakuto. It was meaningless thinking about what could have happened and yet didn't. Yes, he couldn't have his own Zanpakuto due to his spirit being damaged in some way. Yes, he got a spare one from a depository. And no, their characters didn't match at all. _'So much for my mental evaluation… They were supposed to give one that matched me at least a bit.'_

_'Why?'_ That annoying voice again... _'You chose me yourself as far as I know.'_

During that distraction he almost didn't notice Soifon shunpo-ing next to him. He barely noticed her raising her right hand. It looked like she was trying to poke him, but then the young man noticed some strange styled thing on that hand.

And he almost dodged her strike, almost… The pain was quick to come, with a strange feeling he couldn't quite describe. He looked where the girl's armored finger pierced his clothes and apparently flesh and was surprised to find a butterfly shaped marking there.

"If I pierce the exact same spot again – you're dead."

Her voice was quiet and yet he heard those words perfectly from nearly thirty meters away. The young man gulped in worry, but soon realized that she wouldn't have a chance to strike him again if he simply continued being the fastest one in their fight.

He smiled again gently rubbing the place where she had got him. "We'll see."

* * *

Soifon felt she could fly off right now. She got him! She really got him! The white haired youth was fast, very fast yet he was beginning to tire out and it meant that she could win.

She held herself back and was trying to conserve her strength. She didn't stand a chance against him if she kept the same pace as he did. She would have worn herself out long before the young man did. So she waited, and her patience was rewarded with a sight of butterfly mark on him.

'_Just have to get my hand close to the place and I win…'_

The young man finally replied her exclamation. "We'll see"

His smile crept Soifon out a little, but she had seen enough of creepy and weird smiles, mainly from Yoruichi. She blinked, only now realizing what she had thought, but she had no time to dwell on it because Shirou disappeared from her sight.

The girl whirled around and was met with a foot to her chest. She flew at least ten meters backwards and coughed hard, trying to restore her breath. While not exactly perfectly executed his kick still was hard, probably hard enough to knock out anyone below fifth seat at once.

She scrambled to her feet while the young man waited, moving his eyes over her with a grim expression. Once she was on her feet again, Shirou disappeared once more. She whirled around, knowing his rather straightforward and not elaborate at all strategies, but was surprised to find herself encased in golden chains.

_Sajo Sabaku! _It was quite obvious that she stood almost no chance now unless she managed to free herself quickly. She felt foolish to getting trapped just like that. She couldn't see the young man behind her but she heard him sitting down.

Yoruichi was ready to stop the fight but he suddenly spoke. "Not yet, I want to beat her fairly."

Soifon felt herself blushing at being pitied like that. It was disgraceful to be in such position when your enemy thought that beating you right now was beneath him.

After of nearly five minutes of not moving, Soifon was beginning to feel the spell weakening. Another few seconds later it was already falling apart, but she had no time to collect herself when Shirou attacked.

He was overwhelming, like a tempest or tornado. She had a little time to dodge, much less try attacking him herself. It seemed that such short rest was enough for him to restore his strength, as unlikely as it was it was probably the truth.

That or he was holding back on her like she did on him. Soifon felt Yoruichi's disapproving look being directed at both of them. Apparently their fight wasn't something she thought it would be. Kisuke was as infuriatingly lazy looking as always, and there was someone else she didn't notice before.

A man with long straight blond hair in a captain's haori stood near Shihoin leader. It was Hirako-taichou, she had heard a little about him from Yoruichi. He thought he was stylish, was at bad terms with the Twelfth Division vice-captain and had the creepiest smile she had ever seen. That was all she really knew about him. It didn't matter now, she needed to concentrate on fighting and winning.

* * *

Shirou was pressing his body to the limits. The kido spell had given him some time to rest but it was too little. He didn't know if he would be able to keep up this any longer, but he certainly didn't want to lose to the girl. The young man supposed Yoruichi was content with the fight, since he was going all out against her protégé.

Soifon managed to dodge some of his attacks, but most of the time she ended up getting hit. She was forced to end her Shikai and parry with a more normal blade but even that didn't help her. A few more moments and she would be beaten, but as those moments passed his speed gradually dropped.

Her voice in his head spoke to the young man_. 'You can't stop now Shinigami, let your passion burn, let it burn through your fatigue, through your weakness and destroy them.'_

_I'm in no mood for philosophic discussions about passion! If you have anything useful to say, say it now._

_'Did I even need to bother? You're as thick skulled as she was.'_ The Zanpakuto spirit spoke with disappointment in her voice and her whispers in his head disappeared.

It was far from the end, though. He knew that She would continue her silent but forceful whispering. She always did, in every fight he fought She commented on his actions, mistakes and the like. Today was no exception, even after he seemingly shut her up, the whispering continued after a few moments.

As he attacked Soifon, the girl's own exhaustion became visible to the young man. She was panting heavily and her skin glistened with sweat. Her brows were furrowed and she didn't dare to take her attention from him. She would've been beaten already if she had done so, both of them knew as much.

He couldn't help but smile, he had the girl's defeat in his hands and it was only a few moments until he could claim it. At the time her voice in his head kept saying over and over 'Burn, burn, burnburnburnburn!', each time 'burn' sounded more and more forceful becoming borderline scream. At the same time another voice joined Her, and it was disturbingly distorted. Shirou couldn't understand what the second voice was saying but it was something that made him want to let go of everything except his primal nature.

It was difficult for him to keep his thoughts together; he would need to visit the Fourth Division to get checked for some kind of mental illness. Shirou wasn't sure it was such a great idea, but it was the only thing he could do.

His Zanpakuto clashed with Soifon's, making a small explosion of sparks. He quickly pressed forward, not letting himself and her have even a slightest break. After another couple of hits her Zanpakuto flew to the ground. Shirou stabbed the girl's shoulder, not noticing how his Zanpakuto went through her flesh and the tip of the blade emerged from another side.

He kicked the girl in stomach and watched her fall to the ground after flying a few meters. The young man immediately shunpo-ed to her, but at the same time felt another unfamiliar presence appearing next to him. The presence wasn't fast enough to prevent him from stabbing Soifon though.

The next second he was already knocked out.

* * *

He lay on his back. There was a building straight above him… or was it in front of him? This world was strange…

A young male appeared in front of him, or maybe above… he didn't really care. The young man looked weird… He moved his lips, but Shirou was unable to understand what he was saying. Yet he was able to feel what the person that he was, he guessed it wasn't him since he felt like he was watching some theatre play, seemed to feel right now: despair, sorrow, guilt, blinding anger… and fear. He didn't fear for himself, he feared the fate others would suffer once the guy in front of him lowered his blade.

That fear was the kind of fear that made you want to crawl into your mother's embrace and hear her soothing words. Hear that everything was going to be alright. The kind of fear that battle-hardened warriors pissed their pants from. The kind of fear that suffocated people. The kind of fear people lost their minds from.

And yet he was unable to do all that, he wasn't even able to move. Either he was too tired or simple didn't have that thing that… that what? He was unable to recall.

The world suddenly changed. Now he was in a destroyed town, dodging lightning fast strikes from a silver haired man. His heart was full of doubt. And fear was still there… yet it wasn't THAT kind of fear.

The blade flashed past him and the man gave him a fox like smile. The man taunted him, Shirou didn't understand what he was saying yet again, but he knew that it was taunt… or maybe that was what the person he was now thought.

The world changed yet again, and yet again there was fear in his heart.

His hand moved to cut a young man wearing glasses. The young man had a disbelieving look on his face. The person he was now screamed in his head 'STOOOOOOOOP!' but the hand didn't stop. Shirou felt a second entity there, that entity felt primal anger and bloodlust.

Someone raised a hand against a member of his clan, his family. He would destroy all threats until there was nothing but dust left from them. He also felt like he could destroy worlds with just a swipe of his hand. …Yes, it was a great feeling, the feeling of being powerful. Shirou didn't ever feel like that, but then the fear returned with doubled strength.

He watched as a hand was separated from the shoulder of the young man with the glasses.

Then he woke up. Bolting upright on his bed the young man breathed heavily and his body glistened with sweat. _'What was that?'_

The young man looked around and found himself in a hospital room. On a chair next to his bed was Lisa, sound asleep herself. He grunted in amusement and changed his position to a more comfortable one.

_'You are a really interesting shinigami, you know that?'_ Shirou wanted to groan hearing her voice in his head yet again. It never led to good things, she either kept telling him how pathetic he was or kept nagging about something equally annoying.

_'You again? Would you please leave me in peace for a moment.'_

_'So you can think about fucking the girl?' _She obviously meant Lisa. He growled without noticing it.

_'Fine. What do you want?'_ He complied, for now at least. It didn't mean it was pleasant to talk to her.

_'Nothing, really… just commenting on that dream of yours. It's really funny how much more pathetic that Shinigami was.'_

He suppressed a desire to snort and answered her. _'Now that is positive. There's a person more pathetic than me! I'm absolutely delighted.'_

_'You can leave sarcasm to that short Shinigami of yours, maybe she'll enjoy it. My previous master was less pathetic than you and yet where is she now?'_

_'How would I know?'_ The young man played innocent, but he obviously knew that her previous master of course would be dead.

_'Oh, yes you would! It's a fate most Shinigami suffer nowadays - getting killed by Hollows.'_

_'Oh? Is that so? Well, I assure you, getting killed by Hollow isn't in my plan.'_

_'Sure… But on a serious note, that fear was really disturbing, even I felt it. And I'm not even a part of your soul, just its resident.'_ That surprised him, for a change She sounded sincere, a behaviour quite unlike her.

They were interrupted by a silent groaning. "Shirou? You're up already?" Lisa rubbed her eyes and put on her glasses.

"As you can see. Why am I here? What happened? I remember fighting Soifon-san and that's all."

"Apparently you really tried to kill her. Hirako-taichou and Shihoin-taichou were forced to knock you out." His mouth formed into an O shape and he stared at Lisa for several moments.

The young man finally collected himself and spoke. "Hirako-taichou? What was he doing there?"

"Watching your test obviously."

"Yeah…? So what now?" Shirou put both of his hands behind his head and leaned on them.

"You are to go through the mental evaluation next morning." Lisa stared at him intently through the wall of her glasses. Only now he noticed that she never spoke to anyone without them. Well, he didn't see every second of her life so he couldn't really say it like that but at least it seemed that way.

"Right… that's great… kind of. Why are you here?"

"I was worried about you, fool. Isn't it given?" The white haired man's eyes widened at that. He never expected that from her, sure he couldn't quite read her, but still… it still was a huge surprise to hear that SHE was worried about HIM. He might as well have been blind until now.

"I don't know? Never really noticed that you cared that much, I guess." He rubbed his head in surprise while blushing mildly.

"Jerk."

"Sorry…"

It was strange… with Lisa, he decided.

* * *

The next morning he was examined by the same woman that examined him that time when he acquired his Zanpakuto. She was looking at the answers he had written down for the test she had given him. The woman lifted her eyes and looked at him for a moment then spoke.

"…well, everything aside from your overwhelming Reiatsu growth seems normal. You're just normal Hollow-turned-Shinigami, Yadomaru-san." She turned her face to Yoruichi who was also in the room. "Whatever it was that made him act like madman was not his fault."

"That's… reassuring."

Shirou got up wanting to leave but decided to thank the woman for her helping… or not, he didn't really know if it was a good thing that it wasn't him back then. "Thank you...?"

"Osaragi Naomi."

"Thank you, Osaragi-san." Shirou bowed with his head and left the room. Once outside he decided to wait for Yoruichi. The woman didn't make him wait too long.

"…strange." Yoruichi muttered looking into distance.

"What?"

"You're strange, that's what." She answered grinning at him.

"Ah. So, what now?"

"…you could always visit Soifon and tell her how sorry you are." If it could be possible, Yoruichi's grin became even wider.

"That's… really… helpful." Shirou was taken aback a bit. That woman was really, really strange, but opinions aside he should do what she just told him.

"What did you expect? I don't really know what to do with you myself." The brown skinned woman waved her hands in an 'I-dunno' way and folded them under her chest, which made it look quite bigger. "Well, you technically won… technically." She sighed and looked away.

"Technically…" He chuckled at that, they both knew that it wasn't justifying what he did.

"Nah, don't blame yourself kiddo. Bad things come, bad things pass, a strong person remains."

"You seem to speak from experience."

Yoruichi disregarded what he had said and turned to walk away but then stopped and looked at him. "Come on, let's see if you can keep up with me. I'll even hold back a little." She disappeared in flash of Shunpo and Shirou was left to contemplate whether she went to visit Soifon or somewhere else. After second of thinking he moved to where Soifon was supposed to be.

* * *

Soifon was paler than usual, no wonder with what he did. The good news was that the wounds weren't extensive and she would be ready to leave Fourth Division in two days' time. She was glaring at him at the moment. Shirou decided that this reaction was quite tame for her. He expected… well, to be honest he didn't really know what exactly he had expected. Yelling maybe? He didn't know, after all.

The young man cleared his throat preparing to speak but at this exact moment the door chose to be opened by none other than Hirako Shinji. The man waved his hand as if saying 'don't let my interruption bother you'. Well, relatively speaking he couldn't bother Shirou any more than Yoruichi could and the woman was here to begin with.

The white haired man cleared his throat and finally spoke. "…errr, well, I'm sorry for what I did. I don't remember what happened there but I WAS told."

Soifon shook her head in disbelief and answered. "…apology accepted."

Shirou looked expectantly at Yoruichi waiting for her to let him go, but it never came. Instead she walked out of the room with Hirako and gave him a smirk that said everything. The young man cursed mentally and folded his hands.

"…this is awkward." He finally said, and added after a moment of thinking. "Look, I'm really sorry and I really don't know what I should do now. So, can I go?" In the end of his speech he was blushing slightly and looking at anything but Soifon.

First he was waiting for some outraged reply, but instead he heard a soft chuckle. The young man looked at the girl in the bed. Strangely enough Soifon was smiling which he had never seen from her. _'Hmmmmm, cute…'_ Then her face returned to her usual unreadable expression and she spoke. "Yoruichi-sama is probably behind the door, and won't let you out."

"You think?" Shirou looked at her a bit surprised. Not that it was surprising that Yoruichi would do such a thing, but more that Soifon would state it so bluntly.

"You think otherwise?" The girl frowned drawing her eyebrows closer together.

"Hmmmmm, I don't know…" The young man scratched his chin, wondering what would happen if he did stay. "Well, I'll stay here for now then." Even if this was awkward, he had to show some backbone.

For a few minutes silence prevailed in the room. None of its occupants wanted to say anything and it was getting to Shirou. He was never one to enjoy silence, he didn't like too much noise as well, but now the problem was silence.

Finally deciding to stop it, Shirou spoke."…did you really want that position?"

"Yes, and more so I didn't want you to have that position." That was an interesting answer, he would have understood it if Soifon showed any contempt or dislike for him, but her expression was just neutral.

"Why's that?"

"You seem unreliable."

"Well, thanks for the vote of confidence." The young man chuckled but something bigger than determination appeared in his eyes. "Don't worry though, I can be reliable."

The young man stared at the wall blankly with thousands of thoughts swirling in his head. After a short while he was brought back to the reality by Soifon's voice. "You're really sincere, you know?" Shirou's eyes widened a bit as he almost choked on air.

* * *

Two weeks had passed, Soifon was out of Fourth Division hospital for a long time already and Shirou was slowly getting used to his role as a vice-captain. He was going to attend his first captain meeting today and naturally was quite nervous. Unfortunately Yoruichi was late and it did nothing to soothe his nerves.

He was near the First Division headquarters, where the captain's meetings were usually held. Most of the captains and their lieutenants were here. The only ones absent or running late were Yoruichi, the newly appointed captain of the Eleventh Division and captain of the Tenth Division, but in this case their lieutenants were missing too.

A brown haired man with glasses walked up to him and spoke. "Nice to meet you, I'm Aizen Sousuke. I assume you're the new vice-captain of the Second Squad?"

"Yes, nice to meet you too." He looked at the man expectantly, his eyes asking what he wanted.

Before the man could continue, another one appeared. It was the blonde that Shirou recognized as the captain of this Aizen guy. Hirako smiled with his weird toothy smile and interrupted whatever the brown haired man was going to say.

"Don't scare the newbie with your bullshit, Sousuke." The blond man slapped the other guy's back and continued. "He's nervous enough for the first time being here."

"I'm just annoyed that Yoruichi-taichou hasn't come yet."

"Don't worry, she'll show up. She hasn't missed even one meeting. But I have to say, you're a promising young man. I won't be surprised if one day you became a captain." Shinji put his hand on the youth's shoulder and looked at Sousuke who was already away from the two of them.

"I'm not worrying, I'm annoyed. But it doesn't matter." He waved his hands in a 'don't worry' motion and smiled weakly.

Hirako did his best to introduce him to everyone but, Shirou guessed that at most he would remember only the captains by tomorrow.

Finally Yoruichi showed up and after a few moments so did the head captain. Nearly half of an hour was filled with empty banter about some seemingly trivial things.

The major topic was the academy education reform. The Central 46 had created a law that would require all academy students to complete their seven years education program before joining the ranks of the Gotei 13. He was mildly amused, he was probably the last one to graduate early before completing the full Shinigami training.

"And now on to the last thing. We need applications for the empty captain position. You all are tasked with finding a suitable candidate to fill it." Yamamoto's voice was quite loud for an old man as he said those words. Shirou looked at the man next to him, a vice-captain of fourth squad. He didn't remember the guy's name, even though he had been tasked with learning about all high ranking officers of the Gotei 13 by Yoruichi. Despite that and the fact that Hirako had even introduced them he didn't remember, but the man was as confused as he was. They both shrugged and assumed their previous neutral postures.

Yamamoto went on and on about requirements for the captain's post. In the meantime the young man kept wondering who would be nominated for this position. It was obvious that Yoruichi would offer someone, but he didn't know who that lucky person would be, or maybe unlucky, it all depended on the way someone saw his or her duties.

When the meeting was over Yoruichi turned to him and spoke silently so everyone else but him would have trouble hearing her. "Find me Kisuke and do it fast."

* * *

Review please and ask questions if you have them.


	7. Chapter 5: Swing of a Pendulum

I was feeling a lot more productive lately, it seems my productiveness increases as exams draw nearer and nearer, reaching its zenith when they start. Or is it when there are no games that I plan to play? Jokes aside, I really am impressed with myself. It has been a long time since I've released a chapter so fast.

* * *

Chapter 5: Swing of a Pendulum

* * *

Beta-ed by** Faroush**

* * *

Not for the first time Yoruichi was wondering if she had done the right thing with Shirou. He was a strange one indeed, more so than he himself knew. More so than what she had thought after meeting him for the first time. The kid appeared on the edge of Rukongai where Hollow activity was amongst the highest in Soul Society. And yet he hadn't been harmed by Hollows… Although he had both abnormally large reiatsu and a Hollow taint, which didn't happen with Shinigami that often. The last thing however was perhaps the most disturbing of all: the wounds he had had on the day her division's patrol had found him in the forest had obviously been created by a Zanpakuto.

Well, at least he was a lucky one, not everyone would have been able to live with those wounds, much less walk at least a mile from the shore of that lake. His luck had helped him to get adopted by Yadomaru clan, his luck had made him choose _that_ Zanpakuto, his luck had made him befriend the heirs of two major noble houses… His luck was incredible, but sometimes it worked against him as well.

That he had chosen _that_ particular Zanpakuto was an ambiguous event. Its previous owner had gone insane during a battle in a Hollow incident. Some time ago, probably around thirty years, about a hundred Hollows had somehow gotten into safe districts of Rukongai. A fairly large contingent of unseated Shinigami from several divisions had been dispatched to protect the civilians, while many of the seated officers had engaged the Hollows.

Halfway through the battle the Fourth Seat of the First Division, a young woman by the name of Yanagi Kohaku, who hadn't achieved her Shikai yet, had started to attack her fellow Shinigami. She killed about ten unseated Shinigami and two officers before she was killed by a Menos Grande. The incident had been a pretty big event for Gotei 13, since nothing like this had happened for maybe more than two hundred years.

And now only a short while ago Yadomaru Shirou, the wielder of the exact same Zanpakuto, had attacked her private bodyguard. While they had been expected to fight he had still gone overboard with the extent of his brutality. The tests of course hadn't show anything suspicious, but even if they had she had been willing to persuade that Osaragi woman to keep quiet about it. It was risky of course, but she hadn't gotten where she was now by playing it safe.

That's where Hirako came in. His suggestion about keeping the most dangerous among the most valuable close to you was something she herself had never thought about. Yes, Shirou was much too valuable to see all that seemingly limitless potential rot in the Maggot's Nest. The way Shinji not so subtly hinted at Aizen being dangerous made her wonder about just what that guy could possibly do. He seemed harmless enough to pass for a weak librarian. Although… Kisuke seemed harmless too and he definitely wasn't.

But Kisuke was another case altogether. It was his wild experiments that made him dangerous, surely Sousuke couldn't be the same? Could he?

But she didn't just stop at keeping Shirou close to her. Oh no, she didn't…

* * *

Lisa and Shirou were walking to their respective divisions. They had just exited the Yadomaru mansion and it was a long walk ahead. Unfortunately for the white haired young man, his sister still didn't agree to simply use Shunpo without an important reason.

Lisa glanced at the young man briefly and returned her gaze to the path ahead. He was strange, she had decided that a long time ago… and powerful. Sometimes being near him felt like standing near captain since his Reiatsu was so great. He was one of the fastest Shinigami that she knew. He was good in Zanjutsu, not too bad in Hakuda and Kido. Well, he had been terrible in Kido at the beginning, but when he had started training it he had somehow learned several spells and could do them even without the incantation.

Some time ago, the Vice-Captain of another division, a green haired girl called Mashiro, had asked her about Shirou. Lisa had told her most of the things that she knew. But what came next was quite unexpected; the girl started offering explanations to both the absence of his memories and his immense Reiatsu. She suggested that he might be a Captain from another dimension, that he might be a time traveler, that he might me a Super-Shinigami from another planet… Her suggestions were as outlandish as they were funny.

In the end Lisa gave the girl the only more or less valid explanation which both Shirou and her family had agreed upon. Shirou was a purified Hollow of high power. That explained both of his strange circumstances, as the purified Hollows usually had no memories upon coming to Soul Society. Of course memories of normal Plus souls disappeared slowly too, but he had none from the beginning.

She was startled and nearly jumped when Shirou spoke. "So, how is it being the Vice-Captain of Captain Kyouraku?"

She gave the young man a small scowl, something she apparently picked up from him, and answered. "Frustrating."

He looked at her with confused eyes. The black haired girl sighed and rubbed her forehead. Then she straightened her back and replied nonchalantly. "I had to grab his butt to wake him up."

Shirou gave her a strange look with disbelief mixed in. "When did you become this… perverted?"

She shrugged and kept on walking, after some time she finally answered. "I just became more open about it."

"Oh." He said it like it was some kind of revelation and then whispered barely audibly. "Well, whatever you say."

She shrugged again, remembering how many times he borrowed her erotic books and manga. His tastes were quite ordinary though. She had wide collection of different genres, but he seemed to stay away from too extreme stuff, preferring to read something she imagined a normal girl would probably like. The stuff he read was usually quite romantic and most of the times consensual, however the interesting thing was that most of the manga involved older women.

Well, Yoruichi was older than him… quite a bit actually. Lisa decided to tease him a little on the subject. "You yourself seem to be in denial."

The reaction was as expected, Shirou blushed. It wasn't a deep red like she had hoped but the result was still good enough. "Errrrrrrmmm… that's one way to put it. But just between us, don't say such things in public." The young man made a pleading face, stopping for a moment to get Lisa to look at him.

She just shrugged again, his puppy eyes needed a lot of work. "I'll think about it."

For several minutes they walked in silence, this time Lisa decided to break it herself.

"By the way, when did you get a new haircut?" It was the first question that came to her mind right away.

The young man put his hand on his head and ruffled his white locks. "Yesterday… my ponytail was becoming old quite quickly. I needed something new to not look like Captain Ukitake." His hair was much shorter now, she couldn't say how short exactly, but it was something between an inch or two.

She decided to accept his truthful answer and spoke in somewhat sad tone. "I liked it." She looked at him and put her hand on his head to stroke his hair slowly. Shirou was obviously uncomfortable with it so she stopped her actions.

The white haired man made a face that said 'oh well, no helping it' and shrugged. After a moment she heard him speak with hints of sarcasm in his tone. "I'll ask you next time when I go to get a haircut."

"Now, that's reassuring." She chuckled softly at his words and continued their walk in silence.

Her thoughts kept swirling around him and Yoruichi. Whatever was between them, it wasn't something they showed to people. Either they wanted to hide it or the woman was just making advances on him and he didn't notice them like he did with her own 'advances'. If it was the second she still had a chance, but that meant that he was as thick skulled as she both feared and hoped.

The only way she saw it was to directly tell him. She had been slowly gathering her courage for almost two years now and Lisa hoped that she would be able to finally say it. She slowly started with a quiet voice. "You know, we need to talk about something…"

The exact same moment she stopped to inhale some air, the short girl, Lisa remembered her name now - it was Soifon, appeared in front of the two of them with a flash of Shunpo. "Yadomaru-san! Here you are! I've been looking for you. Yoruichi-sama has requested your presence." After finishing her short speech the black haired female gave Lisa a greeting nod and waited for Shirou's reply.

He looked at his sister, tilting his head a little. "Can it wait Lisa? Or was it something important?"

She wanted to grind her teeth from anger and shout at him that it couldn't wait… but the words that came from her mouth next were far from that. "…no. Go on ahead if you wish."

"Okay. I promise we'll talk about it the first chance we get." He gave her that radiant smile of his that always made her heart flutter and soar and disappeared with Soifon.

She clenched her fists, and finally ground her teeth in anger that increased with each passing minute. "Damn it…" She was still so… so very weak when it really mattered to her.

So very, very weak…

She clenched her fists even tighter, actually drawing blood now. She would be ready next time.

* * *

The moment Shirou started to question the destination Soifon was leading him to, was when he noticed that they were getting further and further away from the Second Division headquarters and closer to the Eleventh Division. He abruptly stopped and called out to the girl. "Wait! Where are we going?"

The girl stopped too and turned her head to look at him. They stared at each other, Shirou's scowl increasing with each passing moment. Finally her expression changed, becoming a neutral mask of professionalism. "It was actually I who needed your help." Soifon went silent for a moment and turned around to fully face him. "Yoruichi-sama calling you was just an excuse."

"Is that so?" The young man whispered to himself, letting his still somewhat intense scowl turn into just unpleasantly curled lips.

"You see, Urahara-san is getting promoted and I believe that he isn't suited for it." The black haired girl clenched her fists in a visible display of anger and continued. "I need to show it to Yo…"

"Yeah, yeah, you need to do this, you need to do that…" The young man folded his hands and looked her in the eye with a stern and very serious expression on his face. "You know yourself that nothing would change her decision. Urahara will become a Captain, like it or not." By this point Soifon wore a look of shock and surprise on her face but he ignored it and continued to speak. "She would likely laugh it off and you would feel bad after you show her his 'incompetence'."

"…why is he becoming a Captain?" Her expression was still shocked but the girl was slowly collecting her composure.

"Wait, you mean you spoke of some other promotion?" Shirou rubbed the top of his head now surprised himself. He wasn't informed about this, so this was probably an order issued just today… or Yoruichi had just decided to keep him in the dark. Either way he would ask her to clarify her reasons for that later.

She gave him a short nod of confirmation and spoke. "Yes, the Head of Detention Unit."

"Well, that's a surprise. Let's save the time and just go ask Yoruichi why she did it." The white haired young man said, preparing to go to Second Division quarters.

"No, even if it's like that… no, more so because it's like that I need your help. You know him well, you would know where to find him." The girl looked back at him with more determination that he had ever seen from her during their brief period of knowing each other.

"Listen Soifon, you know how stubborn Yoruichi is." He wanted to get along with her. Some part of that was because he liked her, some part was because he still held a little grudge against Urahara, and some part of it was because he didn't want to talk with Yoruichi right now. But he couldn't, he was as Hiyori from the Twelfth Division usually put it 'a law-abiding Vice-Captain'.

"Listen to yourself, that man is incompetent and lazy! You haven't seen the place where he lives. I can't even begin to understand how Yoruichi-sama gave someone like that the position of Third Seat. Although, considering that they are childhood friends… perhaps her judgment was so poor because of that."

Shirou sighed, his head hanging low. It seemed that Soifon was fixed not only on Yoruichi, but on Urahara as well. While she wanted to prove herself to the woman, the blond guy was the exact opposite and she wanted to prove to the same woman that he was an incompetent failure. An annoying voice in his head added 'Just like you, it would seem.' The young man just ignored it completely. He looked up again and moved his gaze to meet Soifon's eyes.

Two of them stared at one another for some time. Finally the young man sighed in defeat and shook his head. "You're hopeless, you know? Anyway, I won't try to stop you, but I will go on my own way back to the division. I'll ask Yoruichi why she is pulling that promotion out of her you-know-what."

Shirou turned away and left without giving Soifon time to reply to his words.

* * *

While Shirou was going to Second Division quarters his thoughts drifted back to Lisa's words. 'We need to talk about something…' It sounded like it was something pretty serious. She had also seemed not like her usual self. Normally she would never beat around the bush like that, but that could only mean one thing: whatever she wanted to talk about wasn't so normal.

He sighed in regret, he should have stayed to listen to her. What Soifon had wanted him to help with was stupid anyway.

He allowed himself to blink once but when his eyes opened he was in his inner world. He looked around, seeking Her. It seemed that since his last visit, which had been quite a long time ago, the water level had decreased significantly. Some of the buildings even seemed intact now.

Shirou smiled at that, whatever it meant it should mean good things. He noticed Her sitting on the edge of the roof of one of the buildings with her black legs hanging down. The young man used Shunpo to get to Her. When he was there the teen sat near the woman while keeping his silence.

She started to speak while not looking at him. "I'll give you another chance. I had a change of heart. I'll say my name once more, but only today."

Shirou gawked at the woman. His jaw nearly fell to the ground… no, more like water. 'What the fuck is wrong with her? That woman…' He collected himself and spoke. "Is that why you called me here?"

"Yes and no. I will tell you why later." She removed her hood and turned to face him. Shirou noticed that not only her mood was unusual, but her facial expression was much more open too. Now She looked almost like some of the younger academy students – naïve and hopeful.

Her lips began to move, but Shirou only understood the first letter 'K'. While the sound coming to his ears was static, he should have understood what She said by the lips' movements at least. Yet when he tried to think of the meaning of those movements it escaped him. It was almost like trying to catch fish with his bare hands. The fish was not only wet and slippery but also had a mind of its own and tried to dodge any attempts at capturing it.

She tried to say it again and again, but the only thing he understood was that the first letter was 'K'. Seeing that he didn't hear her nor did he understand her, her expression changed from hopeful to angry. The woman scowled and seemed to shout by the volume of the static in his ears. Her expression was quickly becoming furious and She started cussing in between saying her name.

Shirou extended his hand and touched her shoulder. "Calm down, I'm sure now is not the time to get worked up like this."

"Like hell it is! You don't fucking understand what that shit means you imbecile!" She yelled with her eyes wide and spiteful.

"Listen, I know y…" Just as he started speaking her fist collided with his face and his head nearly smashed into the concrete of the building they were both on.

The young man got up, rubbing his jaw and glaring at Her. "What the fuck was that for?"

"For being a stupid 'I-know-everything' bastard!" She yelled, curling her knuckles and staring at him with an angry look.

Shirou had no time to blink as She appeared in front of him and smashed her knee into his guts. He flew off the building and crashed into the one opposite of the first one. But even after that he broke through several walls before stopping. The young man touched his stomach, wincing and jerking his hand away when the pain shot through him.

She appeared in front of him and strolled calmly towards the young man while he was getting his body upright again. When about ten meters remained between them, She dashed ahead and swung her leg. Shirou again was outmatched, but he didn't expect Her to stop with her foot pressed to his throat. She could've crushed his windpipe considering that he was standing right next to wall.

She was standing on one leg while the other was pressed against his neck. Her glare was quite intense. And the most curious thing was that her position was giving him quite good view of her nakedness under her black cloak which had never revealed anything… up until now of course. She was quite muscular, not the bodybuilder type, but the type that makes you wonder if that was what perfectly built and beautiful woman would look like. She seemed to notice where he was looking. 'Shit, I shouldn't have stared!'

Her leg started pressing deeper into his neck. Shirou immediately grabbed it and tried to tear it away. 'Why is it so damn hard? It wasn't like that before!' He grunted when his throat was finally released from the pressure of her foot. The white haired young man used Shunpo to get away from Her and reappeared on the rooftop of another one of the intact buildings, and She immediately followed.

They stared at each other for a long time and finally her gaze softened. She sighed and rubbed her temples. It seemed that her anger, unlike her grudges, didn't last for a long time. She spoke in a loud voice. "Leave, Shinigami. Leave before I change my mind."

Shirou was uncertain what to do. It seemed like the best choice for now, but he still remembered that telling him her name was not the only reason she called him here today. He voiced his concerns. "You said there was another reason you called me here."

"Ah, yes, you should not dwell on what happened but try to minimize the damage you've already done." When he just stared at her blankly she frowned and clarified. "Just talk to Lisa, you idiot. I was going to tell you about what was wrong with her in detail, but you've changed my mind. Now get out, before it's too late!"

* * *

His eyes snapped open and his face would have greeted the wall but he managed to stop. The young man inhaled deeply. That encounter with Her was troubling. She didn't act like he had expected from her… After he thought about it a little he realized that she had never acted the way he expected her to act.

Troubling indeed… not even once she had acted like she had the previous times. Yes, she did try to beat him up before but that time and this time were completely different. That time she was shouting and cursing him, this time she was completely silent… what a strange spirit she was…

Shirou's thoughts kept revolving around Her and Lisa, switching between one another from time to time while he approached the Second Division at a moderate pace. He walked inside, hearing 'good mornings' and 'hellos' from all sides and absent mindedly replied.

As he walked into the room reserved for the Captain the sight that greeted him was a bored, half-asleep Yoruichi. It was never a good thing for him, and he prepared his mind and nerves to do something ridiculous. Fortunately the brown skinned woman wasn't in the mood for the games. Nor was she in a mood for talking, judging by the way she ignored him.

Shirou coughed to get her attention and spoke. "Yoruichi-san, why did you need to promote Urahara-san after you already confirmed that he is the most likely person to get the Captain's position in the Twelfth Division?"

She looked at him a bit annoyed, and the young man immediately recoiled. Getting on the nerves of another hot tempered woman was not in his plans for today. However, she decided to grace him with an explanation. "A Captain needs some experience in commanding people. And Kisuke has none. So, I'll at least try to fake it and whether he screws up or not is up to him."

The young man blinked looking at the Goddess of Flash. "So, that's it?"

"Yeah. Again you expect more where there is nothing." The woman muttered, not removing her face from the palm supporting it. Her next words were much clearer and easier to understand now. "Learn to distinguish matters where there might be something hidden from view and where there is nothing to look for."

"By the way, where is he? Soifon seemed pretty upset with him." He looked around as if expecting Kisuke to appear from somewhere while he wasn't looking.

The woman yawned and waved her hand dismissively. "He's doing his job I guess and then he'll be training to get his Bankai."

Shirou was surprised at that, if only a little. He had thought that since she pushed Kisuke's promotion he already had Bankai. The youth rubbed his chin and asked the question that would be valid seeing how the Captain's position requires the Final Release and Urahara had none. "Doesn't achieving Bankai take a long time? Like dozens of years?"

Yoruichi smirked and got up. She walked to the young man and her smirk only widened seeing his confused expression. "You want to know how he does that?"

Shirou blinked several times and then shrugged, giving his answer. "…yes?"

"Try to not lag behind." The young man frowned at both her words and her laugh as the purple haired woman disappeared from his sight.

They went to the Sokyoku Hill, crossing nearly half of the Seireitei. Shirou was quite surprised when they stopped there. His captain dragged him down to the small entrance of what appeared to be a cave. Once in the cave, the woman bent down and opened a hatch. There was another cave below and the two of them went down using a flimsy looking rope ladder.

A sight before Shirou's eyes was breathtaking. What had looked like a simple cave now seemed like another place altogether. There was sky, there was wind, there was fresh air and there were even some trees. The ground still lacked grass, though. A pity, really, he rather liked the grass around Seireitei. Not like there was any, besides the grass in the mansions' courtyards, though.

Yoruichi looked at him and smirked when she saw his awestruck expression. She laughed loudly and slapped his back. The woman went ahead, leaving Shirou standing there. "Come on, I'll show you something even more interesting."

He followed intrigued by whatever the purple haired woman wanted him to look at. Ahead of him the Shihoin house head stood, holding a large, white and distantly humanoid shaped thing. She smiled widely and set it straight.

The woman walked away from it and gestured at the white thing. "Go ahead and stab it."

Shirou shrugged and did as he had been told. He regretted it immediately. She appeared in front of him and didn't waste any time to punch him. The young man winced and rubbed his sore jaw, watching how She disappeared and glared at him as she did so.

Yoruichi stroked her chin, which went unnoticed by the teen, and then smirked. "What a friendly gal. No wonder you have troubles attaining Shikai."

Shirou turned to look at the brown skinned woman. "What was that thing supposed to do anyway?"

She folded her hands and assumed a serious expression. "It forcefully materializes your Zanpakuto spirit. It is required to attain Bankai. You see, to get Shikai, you need to go to your inner world and form a bond with the spirit by learning his or her name. To attain Bankai, however, you need to materialize your Zanpakuto spirit outside of your inner world and make it submit to your will by beating it in combat. Well, that's what usually happens anyway."

Just as she finished Shirou heard a voice calling the two of them from above. "Yoruichi-san, Yadomaru-san! What are you two doing here?" Kisuke was still hanging on that rope ladder.

Yoruichi motioned for him to get down and waited until he was in front of them before giving her reply. "I was showing him your invention."

Urahara looked at her with his eyes widening and concern clear in his voice. "Is that wise?"

"You should have learned by now to trust my judgment."

The blond man smiled sheepishly and spoke. "Okay, okay, no more complaints."

* * *

Watching Soifon give Yoruichi the 'proof' of Kisuke's incompetence was mentally painful. The Shihoin woman humiliated the younger one. And the girl didn't even try to retaliate. Shirou wanted to do something but he had learned some time ago that it would only make the matters worse and make Soifon angry with him. She would usually say something about how it wasn't something he should be concerned about.

The young man sighed, the worst thing still was ahead of him. He needed to talk with Lisa. And he would talk to her, but the result of it wasn't something he could predict. It all depended on her mood and whether she felt talkative or not.

He made his way towards Lisa's room and stopped at the door unsure of how he should enter. His worries were stopped when the door opened revealing annoyed girl, though. She motioned him to enter and closed the door.

Her room was surprisingly guy-ish for a girl's room. It wasn't like he expected something else. There were some magazines lying around, a few books and a bottle of some kind of alcohol. Shirou sighed, relieved that it wasn't open and the girl wasn't drinking. A drinking Lisa usually meant that something, which no one would like to hear, was on her mind.

The black haired girl sat on the floor and motioned him to do the same. Shirou stared at her, unsure if he should start or if she was just thinking of what to say. Finally, the silence got to him and he spoke. "You wanted to talk about something back then."

She visibly swallowed and started speaking about it with a nervous voice. "It's something I've been meaning to tell you for a while now."

He closed his eyes, mentally preparing himself. He had already thought of many scenarios of this talk and almost nothing could surprise him. "I'm listening."

She seemed unconfident; he had never seen her like this. Ever. And somehow he always knew that it wasn't something he shouldn't expect from her. "I…ummm… it's a difficult thing to say just like this… give me some time."

And so they sat in silence… a ringing, deafening silence. Lisa seemed to be biting the inside of her cheek. Shirou leaned back using both his arms for support and stared at the ceiling. The weird thing was that he wouldn't have minded hearing Her at the moment. It was usually comfortable with Lisa, even though it was strange too, but now was one of those very awkward moments. Like the one when he had apologized to Soifon…

"I… errrr, like you." Shirou snapped his head to look at her. His eyes were wide like saucers, but it seems that it wasn't all. "Yes, I like you. A lot." She added in more confident voice. "I love you, in fact."

Shirou swore mentally. Of all the things he was prepared to hear today it just had to be this one. He never seriously thought that she would actually say it. It was almost like some kind of comedy play. He didn't know how to react, though his mouth chose to imitate his eyes and hanged open.

Finally his mind had actually processed one thought: 'Shit. I'm so screwed.' If he didn't give her an answer he knew that she would be angry with him for a long time. But if he did… it would depend on whether it was yes or no.

He honestly didn't know what he felt about it. The 'I'm so screwed' part kept going back and forth in his head until he accepted it wholeheartedly. He cared about Lisa, but it wasn't like what he felt about Soifon. It was strange with her and yet comfortable, comfortable yet strange, strange yet comfortable… His mind looped on the same thing again and again and his eyes took a more normal shape. He could say that he felt more than friendly affection to the girl sitting in front of him, but it wasn't the feeling she was hoping for.

"I think I broke him… great, just great." Lisa muttered to herself thinking that he was too focused on what she had said to hear it.

It seemed to switch his brain on to full power. He had to give her an answer. The white haired Shinigami took a less relaxed position and cleared his throat. "I can't answer that. I like you more than friend or sibling but it's not something you hope for."

Not waiting for her reply Shirou stood up and walked out. The young man ignored whatever she was saying to him. He clenched his fists on the way to his room, feeling angry with himself. He should have given her a definite reply, not that bullshit! He felt like an asshole. He punched the wall and soon as he entered his room and slumped down on the bed feeling exhausted.

Shirou heard a loud crack and the walls of the mansion shook. He was certain that unlike him Lisa had punched through the wall of her room. He chuckled sadly at this and closed his eyes thinking things like how it wouldn't be comfortable around her anymore. It would be nothing but strange and awkward…

He had never thought about her that way. Nor had he ever thought that she might feel like that… Lisa was one of the closest friends he had. There were some guy from the academy who he could say were closer, there was Kaien, perhaps his best friend. And there was she, Lisa… Lisa was just Lisa he had never thought of her in terms of friend or lover until today at least. He had never tried to categorize her, never put a label on their weird relationship. It was something he couldn't understand fully and yet knew that it wasn't just love or just friendship or sibling bonds…

Maybe he had felt something like that, but then it meant that he didn't understand the feeling. The young man sighed, he wanted to get drunk and forget about the whole ordeal. Now he knew why Lisa had that bottle in her room.

* * *

Review please.

Okay now there's something I want to ask. We all know that when Ichigo trained for his Bankai he was in hurry and thus got speed boosting Bankai, kind of. When Renji trained for Bankai, he wanted to reach seemingly unreachable Byakuya and got a really long Bankai. Gin's Bankai is god-killing spear, and his goal was kill someone he thought as invincible as god. Now for Soifon, she got her missile thingy, so she probably was really angry and ready to explode after Yoruichi left SS. So what I want is an idea for Bankai that Soifon could have had if she was more calm, collected and determined when training for it. Send me your ideas, if I like one I will use it and of course mention the author of idea, if there are no good ones (IMHO) then I'll just use the standard Bankai for Soifon.

It will mean that her portrayal in some chapters will differ greatly.

Also, I recently posted a Naruto fic, the pairing is NarutoXTayuya, it's AU, but the problem is that nobody seems to review. Now don't be too greedy go review that motherfucker. It's gonna be good story I promise it. In fact I have four more chapters of the fic at least half-ready and whole plot ready.


	8. Chapter 6: 2

This chapter may disappoint some of you. I know you want to see Shirou in that crap that created Vaizards, but ditto, I have other plans. His main involvement with it will be shown in the aftermath of the event.

Beta-ed by **Faroush**, I guess, but he calls himself **Sir Godot** now.

* * *

Chapter 6: **[2]**

* * *

A sound of wooden boards being hit echoed through Seireitei. The same 'Emergency! Emergency!' was being yelled in each squad.

"All captains are to report to the first squad barracks immediately!"

A young man slept in his office in the Second Division. His head rested upon a pile of paper while his right hand was still gripping a brush. His face twitched slightly from the sound of alarm, but it didn't wake him up.

"An anomaly has occurred within the Ninth Squad! The Ninth Squad's captain Muguruma Kensei and Vice-Captain Kuna Mashiro's Reiatsu have completely vanished!"

The young man groaned, pulling his head from the uncomfortable but still very inviting pile of papers and sat straight up. He yawned and scratched his neck. Blinking rapidly he stretched his hands and listened to the yell of the Shinigami that was on duty tonight.

"An emergency meeting of all of captains will commence immediately!"

It didn't take him even a second to gather his thoughts and understand what was happening. Shirou was a morning person. And an evening person. He was even a night person. It was always easy for him to wake up fresh and ready for a new day. Even this sudden emergency didn't change this.

So the next second he was already on his way to where he sensed Yoruichi. He was fast enough to catch up to her midway to the First Squad barracks, or maybe she had just slowed down to let him do it. She spoke as soon as he could hear her.

"The meeting is for captains only, you will wait outside."

Shirou nodded and allowed himself to slow down. After a short run he stopped near the doors to the building where meetings were held. He noticed someone going to the windows and turned to see who it was. Whoever the person was, his or her intentions must have been to spy on the meeting. Whatever he was going to do was forgotten when he saw that it was Lisa who wanted to spy on the captains.

Ten years had passed since her 'confession' and it was still quite weird between them. It was partially the reason why he moved to the Second Squad barracks, too. The second part of it being that his workload seemed to have increased to at least twice the previous amount since Kisuke's promotion.

Now he actually didn't have that much time to rest. He woke up, had breakfast, took care of paperwork, had lunch, supervised the training of unseated division members, had dinner, trained alone, and slept. Of course there were days when he just said 'fuck it' and dumped the paperwork on lower ranked officers, but those were rare, since most of the time the papers were of a higher secrecy level than those lower ranked members had access to.

Shirou closed his eyes, took a deep breath and walked away in silence trying not to alert his surrogate sister of his presence. He didn't want another silent staring contest right now. It was weird, hell, their whole relationship could be only described as weird. Ten years had passed and they were still acting like that?

He almost made himself turn back and go confront Lisa, but his sense of rationality told him that it wasn't a good time for it. Shirou returned to the big door and waited there. A few minutes later a distraught looking Kisuke arrived.

The young man raised a hand in greeting, but shrugged when he received no response from the blond man. Urahara just dashed past him into the meeting room without paying any attention to his surroundings.

Some time passed and two men that Shirou had never seen before walked past him, both nodding their heads in greeting and acknowledgement of his presence. He briefly wondered who they might be, but quickly abandoned that line of thought, deciding to just wait.

A few minutes later captains began walking out of the hall, each looking grim and serious. Kuchiki Ginrei nodded at seeing Shirou, but didn't say anything. The white haired young man snapped to attention when Yoruichi approached him.

"So, what are we going to do, Yoruichi-san?"

"Wait." Her face was as grim as the faces of the other captains, which wasn't that rare, but certainly not that common as well. When things got serious, she got serious too. That's how it always was, and probably always would be.

Two of them then proceeded to the second squad's grounds. While walking to the purple haired woman's office, the woman in question suddenly spoke. "I've noticed something wrong with you. You're too passive, it's just like you decide to go with the flow every time you need to make a difficult decision." Her voice had a little berating quality to it, almost like she wanted to reprimand him without him noticing.

"I… errr… I don't know? I never really thought about it." The young man scratched his cheek staring the Shihoin woman in the eye.

She gave him 'I win' smirk and replied. "I'm not surprised…" Stopping she raised her index finger and continued without the smirk. "…just remember one thing Shirou: apathy is death. Never just stop. You can stop to think things over, but don't stop because you simply can. Each second of idleness is your life becoming shorter by one second. One day it might stop completely, simply because you spent one too many seconds being idle."

He stared at the purple haired woman for a moment and nodded reluctantly. She must have been right about him being apathetic. The white haired young man didn't notice anything like this himself, but thinking back to how his life was so far, he noticed that he indeed usually went with the flow, the only exception to it being his answer to Lisa.

That was very different though.

* * *

More than 24 hours later.

* * *

Shirou sat in Yoruichi's former office, which was also his by extension, since the offices of the captains and the vice-captains were joined. Nevertheless, Yoruichi never spent much time there. She preferred to stay in her big mansion which served as barracks for the Omnitsukido Corps as well.

In front of him stood two bottles. He was drunk and he knew it, and he knew even better that he wouldn't do things he would be willing to do now if he was sober. But no matter how he looked at it, he just couldn't bring himself to care. It was such a good feeling too, not caring about outward appearances or the consequences of his actions.

It really must have been what made so many people seek salvation in alcohol. While you were drunk you couldn't care less about what you did or had done. While drunk you felt as if seas and mountains were nothing compared to you.

The liquor he bought wasn't that strong, so only after he started the second bottle he did feel that maybe it was time for him to stop. Yet it didn't stop him from taking several more gulps of the alcohol from the remaining bottle.

Lisa was gone, Yoruichi and Urahara too… and many others too, of course, but that didn't matter that much. He could think about it all he wanted, but it just remained as strange as that.

_Urahara experimenting on fellow Shinigami and normal souls? Bullshit! Even if the man did that, he would at least be more careful and wouldn't be caught so blatantly. _Kisuke wasn't that stupid, and Shirou wasn't so stupid to believe what was officially told either. Something was off, but he just couldn't pinpoint what exactly.

As if he could change anything now…

The young man squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. He was likely overthinking things. The solution was probably much simpler. He would find the answer, if not for himself, then for Soifon. Seeing her sobbing after she found out that Yoruichi had indeed left was something he had never expected… and never wanted to see again. Besides, the Second Squad would probably be requested to do a thorough investigation of Urahara's activities. So it all was good and nice.

Still, as shocking as Soifon's reaction had been, she was needed with a clear head and strong will. He had no chance to be captain without Bankai, but Soifon would be able to acquire hers in no time. He was sure of that. She was strong, even if a little weird in the head. Her obsession with Yoruichi aside, she was the only person capable of becoming the new captain of the Second Squad. Marenoshin was strong too, but giving a man like him a position of captain would be… undoubtfully foolish. And besides, the man didn't have that much of a chance to achieve Bankai, his Reiatsu wasn't strong enough yet.

Kisuke's invention would help her, but relying on it entirely wasn't a smart thing. If she wasn't successful in taming her Zanpakuto spirit the unconventional way, they would use the more common one. It would take about ten to twenty years for her though. He could fill in the captain role temporary, if that was the case, but it could be unpleasant. Shirou wasn't very fond of that position or the duties it entailed.

There was much to be done besides Soifon's Bankai training. There were such things as leadership required from captains. She couldn't be presented to Head Captain in the state she was now. There were many aspects of leading the division that she didn't know about… yet. He would teach her those.

At least the girl wouldn't need the guard that a noble like Yoruichi required. That was much easier for him. Shirou wouldn't have to find a replacement for her. Not like there weren't plenty other skilled Shinigami capable of becoming a guard of a noble. There just weren't that much people that could compete with Soifon in that aspect.

He got up from his chair and marched to Soifon's quarters. It wasn't too early, he just hoped it wasn't too late to stop that self-pity and denial she was feeling. He could understand her situation, but he couldn't let it continue.

_Indeed, apathy is death… couldn't be truer than now, could it?_

Much could have been avoided if he had been more active. The young man sighed, it all was just wishful thinking, but now that he knew what was wrong he would be able to change it. He felt much more confident now than ever before. Maybe it was just the alcohol getting to his head, or maybe something else entirely, he wasn't sure.

Tomorrow he would see just what it was, just liquor or something different. Nodding to his thoughts, Shirou opened the door to Soifon's room with a resolute jerk.

"Soifon, you here?"

No answer. The young man walked in and turned the lights on. There was crumpled paper scattered around and three empty bottles he recognized to be a popular brand of sake from a low-security districts. The room itself was Spartan in appearance: a bed, a small table and a closet.

He took one bottle and smelled it. _Damn… that's really strong. Did she really drink all of that? _He never drank something as strong as this. The white haired man dropped the bottle and walked out in search of Yoruichi's former bodyguard. Asking the division members who were still awake didn't help that much, but after an hour of it he was pointed to the direction of training grounds.

She was fighting an imaginary opponent. But that wasn't the thing that caught his attention. She kept repeating 'why' like a mantra. Over and over, sometimes it became monotonous, sometimes she yelled it with anger and frustration.

"Soifon!"

He didn't even have time to blink and she appeared next to him when a butterfly mark was already appearing on his neck. Her stinger blade was posed to strike him and face was murderous. _Why is she like that? I didn't do anything bad, did I?_

"Easy there, easy." The young man whispered quietly to the murderous girl.

"Don't startle me like that then, Yadomaru." Soifon sighed and lowered her weapon, choosing to glare at him instead.

Shirou looked around trying to see if she was doing anything besides fighting imaginary enemies. "What were you doing anyway?"

"…nothing."

They stood in heavy silence for several seconds. The young man studied Soifon's expression and her angry posture. The girl in question just stared at the ground. Suddenly she looked him in the eye and spoke in a whisper he was barely able to hear. "…why?"

"What?"

Before he could continue her eyes were blazing with anger once again. The black haired girl stomped over to Shirou and shook him violently while clutching his shinigami robes. "WHY DID SHE LEAVE ME? Why didn't she take me with her?"

Shirou gulped unknowingly. It was the exact situation where he was supposed to act but it seems his brain decided to fail him at the same exact moment. "I don't know, but one thing I can tell you for sure. You need to sober up." He said one of the most stupid things he could have said right now, and it was all the more stupid seeing that she wasn't drunk, just really angry.

"I'm not drunk." Soifon retorted in a snappy manner. "I hadn't drunk or ate anything for twenty hours."

"I'm not talking about alcohol, stupid. What I mean is that you need to come to your senses." It was almost like his mouth got a mind of its own. With the way things went out of it, he wouldn't be surprised if his hands started acting on their own just about right then.

"Quit you bullshit, Yadomaru. You probably need to sober up to, judging by the stench. What did you want anyway?"

The young woman smirked looking at Shirou's dejected expression. He just shook his head and spoke while rubbing his forehead. "Yeah, about that… meet me tomorrow at ten in the morning in my office. We have much to talk about. I'm your superior for now, so I expect you to listen."

"I will. Now, leave me please."

The young man waved his hands in front of himself defensively while speaking. "Yah, yah, leaving." He turned around and strolled to the exit out of the training grounds.

* * *

What wonders time could do to a person? Truly, it was the most fearsome thing in existence. Shirou was feeling it just about right now.

He woke up the next day not feeling anything. Having had a go to the bathroom and some water to keep his already dry throat from dying of the lack of water he finally begin to feel his body. And it was not pretty.

He had drunk many times with his friends and acquaintances from the shinigami academy. Many times ha had been completely wasted, and yet it was the first time for him to experience hangover. It must have been the cheapness of the alcohol he bought. That shit was definitely low quality.

…or so his body said at least. His head ached and not quite ached at the same time. It was more like it was hyper sensitive to anything, be it sounds, colors or anything like that. And it was also heavy, very heavy, so heavy he could barely move it. His whole body felt sluggish as well.

There was something important happening today. He could certainly remember that, but what exactly? No, not quiet.

Someone's fist banged the door. Shirou somehow made it to the said door and opened it partially. Sight of a bit worn out Soifon greeted him. "Greetings, Yadomaru."

"Shhhhh… Not so loud." He gripped his forehead which pulsed with pain.

The young woman blinked at seeing the white haired man recoil while gripping his head as if it would fall apart if he let it go. "Can I come in?"

"Yeah." Shirou turned his back to her and walked to his desk still not taking his hands away from his head. He searched for something on his desk and this something turned out to be a glass. He then proceeded to pour whatever was left in the bottle that stood on the desk into that glass.

Soifon waited in silence while he drank, knowing full well just how bad a hangover could be. She knew well enough the consequences of such things. Many were times when she had witnessed Yoruichi waking up with a hangover. Less were the times when she had one herself. One thing remained in common, whether it was irritable Yoruichi or her own headache, the consequences were unpleasant.

"I see you've been drinking some low quality drinks…" She said looking at the label on the bottle.

"Look who's talking, I remember those bottles in your room." The young man retorted retreating to a small couch that served his as a bed for four years already. The previous one served him and someone else, probably Marenoshin for much more, but eventually became so uncomfortable he just bought a new one with the squad's money.

Soifon leaned onto the wall and spoke. "So, why did you want to see me?"

"Eh, that? Let me think…"

After half a minute has passed the black haired girl started tapping her foot, after another half minute she couldn't wait anymore and spoke while glaring at her superior. "I'm waiting."

"And you will wait until I remember what is it I wanted to speak with you about." Shirou answered not changing anything in his posture and remaining laying in the same position he was from the moment he plopped on that couch. Some more time has passed and his eyes lit up with an idea. "Right, that training ground…"

"What training ground?"

"The one Urahara used." The young man answered while getting up. He placed the glass onto the desk and walked towards the door. "Come on, follow me."

"Tell me where we are going, at least."

"Sokyoku Hill." When the answer came, Shirou's face held the most determined expression she had seen for a while. In fact she wasn't sure she had ever seen him this determined. Maybe during their 'fight' for the vice-captain's spot, but then again, she wasn't so sure of it.

Still, despite his unnatural determination, what surprised her more and drew her attention from that resolve displayed on his face was the answer he gave. "What?" She stopped and cried out in surprise

He stopped and tilted his head back to look at surprised Soifon. "Come, no use in standing around."

* * *

The two Shinigami, having finally arrived to Sokyoku Hill, found the cave where the entrance to the training ground was hidden and began their descend. As they emerged from a short vertical tunnel Soifon's eyes immediately went wide.

"…this is…!"

The young man looked down at her, hanging just below him and looking around like a student from Shihou who saw squad grounds for the first time. "Grand. Yes, it certainly looks impressive. There are some things I need to tell you before we can continue. We should get down first, though."

Once Soifon stopped looking around and they got to the ground, she turned to Shirou and looked at him with her arms folded over her chest. "I'm listening."

The white haired man mulled over what he was going to say for some time. There were good ways to approach the subject and there were bad ones. He wasn't bad at talking with people, then again, he wasn't particularly good at it either. He rubbed his still throbbing forehead and spoke.

"First, I'm going to nominate you for captain's position…"

"But-! That's-!" The black haired woman gasped in surprise and Shirou continued on without giving her time to recover.

"Let me finish. Second, there is a device Urahara used to achieve Bankai in three days' time. I think you may succeed using the same method. And lastly third, I'm going to investigate Urahara's actions." Soifon seemed to settle down as he continued talking and let her thoughts wander around in her head.

When the young man finished, she looked more intently at him with a fire in her eyes that wasn't there before. "What do you want to find?"

"Something. Anything, really. I don't think what they told everyone is truth."

"Do as you like." Soifon sighed and shrugged with some sort of not quite a smirk on her face. It could've been a smile for all he knew.

"Thanks for the support, I guess." Shirou responded rolling his eyes. He closed them and rubbed his hair.

Opening his eyes again to the sound of Soifon's voice he found her face dead serious. "What do you expect? What you are thinking of doing would put you into Maggot's Nest without a question." She somehow looked cute like that, with her half scowl, half something else. He guessed that was something that set her apart from other women he knew, since he never thought about something like this regarding them. Not Yoruichi, not Lisa, not any of his classmates from academy that he still kept in contact with, not any of the Second Division members he knew well enough to form an opinion of, not even that doctor whose name he didn't really remember, and certainly not Kuukaku.

He ruled in his thoughts and replied with a smirk. "But you won't tell anyone. And the First Squad would want a thorough report on his activities anyway. I'll just bend some rules and push some limits."

The girl nodded in confirmation of not telling about him to anyone else. "No, I won't. Who do you take me for? I'm still angry at Yoruichi-sama, but in light of your words I think there might be a deeper reason to this ordeal." She looked around when they stopped walking.

There was a rock of some sort with a small cave in it. Shirou entered the cave and took something from there. As he walked back, the black haired girl looked at the thing in his arms. It was white, and it was the only thing she could say about it without a doubt.

"Geez, such big words, Soifon. Here." Soifon looked the white thing was Shirou giving her like it was something from entirely different world. "This is Tenshintai, something Urahara made. If you stab it with your Zanpakuto, its spirit comes out. The condition of obtaining Bankai is to subjugate the spirit of your sword outside of your inner world. This of course involves calling it to the spirit realm and tons of training, which you don't have time for."

"Have you tried that before?" She looked at the young man with growing skepticism on her face after he mentioned Urahara's name.

"Yeah."

"Results?" Right to the point, just the thing he expected from her.

"She decked me straight into jaw." He replied unconsciously rubbing said jaw.

Soifon's face was getting more and more surprised and skeptical, going beyond the levels of what the young man had seen before. "She? I thought zanpakuto spirit corresponds with the user's gender?"

Shirou gave her a strained smile while rubbing the back of his neck and replied. "My zanpakuto is not exactly my, it's from zanpakuto depository."

"So all the problems with your shikai are because your characters do not mesh well?"

The young man sighed answering in a quiet voice. "I'll tell you about it later if you wish." He stopped speaking for a moment to gather his thoughts and then proceeded with a more loud voice. "Now, this training can only continue for three days and, if there is no significant rise in your Reiatsu during this training, it is advised to stop it."

"Who advised it?" Judging by the expression Soifon's face held, it seemed she expected Urahara to be the provider of that information, and he indeed was, however, if he told her that it had indeed been Urahara, she would likely disregard that. So, Shirou blatantly lied, not like she would detect it anyway

"Yoruichi-san." Soifon seemed to buy it, thankfully, so he continued, this time with truth.

"Seems like she was planning on me trying it out again sometime, or making you go through it. Something like that. Anyway…" He trailed off, before sighing and continuing. "I'll go now, I still have to see Captain-Commander."

* * *

First thing that really stood out in the scenery of Urahara's training ground when Shirou returned there about thirteen hours later was the sight of an exhausted Soifon lying on the ground. She was completely drenched in sweat. Her breaths were shallow, as if she just finished doing whatever it was that exhausted her.

"You look like-" Before he could finish Soifon did it for him.

"Shit."

"Yes, something like that. What were you doing?" He had never seen her so exhausted, and while when she was in hospital she looked plenty bad, it wasn't the same as today.

"She made me chase her, hoping to even touch her." He sat down near the black haired woman while she was speaking and looked at her.

"I guess you were unsuccessful."

Soifon closed her eyes and scowled, most likely in shame and annoyance, if not anger. "She's really small like that, and really fast too." Her tone picked his interest, she sounded like something was out of ordinary with her zanpakuto spirit.

Shirou decided to voice his suspicion and asked. "Like that? You sound like your Zanpakuto spirit was different before."

"She was." The young woman's answer was the one he predicted but what followed was not.

"Now she tiny and looks human, before she was… Well, anyway, what's with that?"

The white haired young man looked up at the sky painted ceiling in thought. There was only one reason why something like that would happen, or at least he saw only one reason. "It must have something to do with Tenshintai. I didn't see any changes, but my zanpakuto spirit already has a human form."

Soifon stayed silent, either in thought or just because she was exhausted. That reminded him of something. The young man got up and spoke offering Soifon a hand. "You know, there is a hot spring nearby. From what Yoruichi-san said, it helps you heal faster. Come on, get up. I'll show you where it is." As he finished, the girl gripped his hand and dragged herself up from the ground.

"Right. Why didn't you tell me that before?" Her tone was an accusatory one, but it seemed she lacked energy to follow up on this.

"I didn't think of that?" Shirou replied guiltily and unsure of the answer, but he _was _guilty here anyway.

"Forget I asked."

"You seem not like your usual self." The young man said offhandedly.

"Just tired." She quickly waved off his question and proceeded with her own. "Did you find out anything about Urahara?"

He scowled at the answer. Did she honestly think that he would be that fast? Or that it would be that easy for that matter? He wasn't sure how much how long his own investigation would take, but the investigation requested by Chamber 46 would take at least a few months. And if he wanted to find something that would pardon Yoruichi, Urahara and the others it could take twice as long.

"No. Don't expect anything until much later." He stated calmly, went silent for a second and then continued with an amused tone in his voice. "Although, there is one peculiar thing I would've never imagined."

"And what's that?"

It seemed that his words picked Soifon's interest so he continued. "Kuchiki Byakuya is getting married. I got handed an invitation. He invites you as well."

The girl's eyes grew wide with surprise. It was to be expected. After all, the timing wasn't the best, not to mention the whole thing came from nowhere. But it seemed that Soifon's surprise was from completely different thing. "Why? I've seen him once or twice."

Shirou scratched his neck in thought and offered an explanation that seemed viable. "Yoruichi-san's other protégé?"

"Right." The black haired girl nodded agreeing. "She instructed him too. When is it?"

"The day after tomorrow."

Soifon made almost an apologetic scowl and said. "I think I'll pass."

Having finally arrived to the location of the hot spring, Shirou helped the girl get to a small bench and sat her down. "You do that. Take your time. I'll visit you tomorrow, be sure to rest. And yeah, I'll leave food here." He put a small bag he was carrying by her side and turned to walk to the ladder that led outside.

"See you." Soifon offered as the young man walked back to the exit from the cavern.

* * *

Kind of a lot of Soifon here, but it's been a long overdue already with the tons of Lisa in previous chapters. Besides, the main pairing is with Soifon not Lisa, so I guess you people were waiting for it.

Review dammit!

Finally this chapter is done. I can't believe it. I fucking did it. I fucking finished this chapter. Fucking finally. This one was very hard to write.

It was mostly because I run out of Bleach fics to read. Imagine that. There is plenty, but almost none that I might like. I go to bleach section and what I see? At least half of all those fics are Yaoi! The half of the remaining half is IchiRuki! The half of the remaining half is Harem fics! The half of the remaining half is IchiHime! The half of the remaining half is absolute shit! The rest – I'm willing to read, and I think there are plenty of those, but I can't sort through all the crap that separates me and those deliciously well written fics I want to read. In other words more than 80% of Bleach fics is something I'm not willing to read. And I know my math, dammit. There are some IchiRuki and IchiHime and Harem fics I'm willing to read, but those are very very rare. For example I'm not against Harem as it is usually portrayed in anime (Isekai Seikishi no Monogatari and similar, in fact I think Isekai is pinnacle of harem anime, I've seen enough and I can say this one is my favorite), but a Harem where main character is a manwhore and every female is just whore? No, thank you. And yes, it fucking bothers me, and I fucking want to talk about it, that's why I'm ranting here if you hadn't noticed.

Well, rant over. I doubt anyone even reads these anyway. Yikari thank you for pointing one kinda glaring problem of the fic. And by the way, thanks for your constant reviewing.

And yeah, Shaft headtilt, I fucking love those. If you don't know what I mean, then google it.


	9. Chapter 7: Dream On

It's been a year boys and girls! How are you? I'm still the same. It's been a year and it's all the same, it's really depressing. Well, we have a new chapter so go read it if you can. I can, so the same could be said about you most likely.

Betaed by **Sir Godot, **he's pretty fast so to reward him go read his fics.

* * *

Chapter 7: Dream On

* * *

"So you don't know anything… Guess I should've expected that. Sorry for the trouble, Aizen-san."

Aizen just smiled pleasantly at Shirou and waved his hand dismissively. The man took off his glasses and cleaned them. He gave Shirou a hard look before speaking. "It's no trouble. More importantly, you look exhausted. With the state of affairs the Seireitei is in at the moment, this is unacceptable. You should take some rest, Yadomaru-fukutaicho."

The young white haired man blinked, not expecting something like that. "Maybe, I'll do that once I'm finished for today."

He was exhausted, that much was true. He hadn't slept for how long now? Was it two days? No, it must have been three. Yes, he hadn't slept from that time he had woken up a hung over Soifon. He must have looked like death with his eyes redder than they normally were and skin paler than many thought was possible.

Never mind that, there were more important things at the moment. He still had places to be and people to see. So far, he had visited only the third and fifth division. And the worst of all, these visits hadn't accomplished anything productive.

"I'll see you around, Aizen-san." He said and turned around to exit, not waiting for Aizen's reply.

He yawned as he walked down the halls of the fifth division. Most of Shinigami he met on his way looked pretty down. They must have felt much like the people in his division. Keeping a division together after a loss of a captain, and not just any loss but betrayal, was damn hard.

No matter, if things went well, he'd have Soifon ready to take over the full reigns of the division in a week at most. That of course was assuming she would be able to tame her Zanpakuto. Bankai required the complete subjugation of zanpakuto, after all.

Sometimes he wondered if just beating Her would let him use Bankai, but then again, he had to do it outside of his inner world. That meant materializing Her and that required cooperation and knowledge of Her name. And just like that he had made absolutely no progress on that front.

As he approached the exit from the fifth division, he noticed that there was some kind of commotion nearby. Several dozens of Shinigami were surrounding something or someone. He was not sure what exactly was happening, so he walked up to them to find out.

"What's the commotion about?"

"Huh?" The nearest man turned and looked at Shirou. "Yadomaru-fukutaicho! Well, fourth seat Jinrai challenged third seat Ichimaru to a duel… and well, both of them decided to go at it right away."

The young man nodded and tried to push through the crowd, in which he was successful. Even if he was from another division, he still was a vice captain and that meant some authority, regardless of his location in Seireitei. So when people noticed just who it was that was pushing them, they gave him way, especially with his quite unusual looks.

In the center, surrounded by shinigami, were two people. One was a small kid with silver hair and fox-like smile. He was practically dancing around the attacks of the other man. His opponent was a portly guy who looked like he was in his mid-forties. He was unshaven, but his light brown hair looked to be well cared for.

"Who is who?" He asked the nearest Shinigami.

"The kid is Ichimaru Gin, the pompous old bastard is Jinrai Kinishi."

Just when Shirou got participant's names, Ichimaru seemed to have gotten fed up with playing around with his elder. In a few swift blows the man was butchered like a pig. Gin just stood there, his clothes stained in blood as he looked at the final gasps of his opponent.

There was something oddly familiar about him. Shirou couldn't quite tell just what, but there was that something that made him think that he had seen the kid before. Then the kid looked up, probably feeling the young man's firm gaze on him, and Shirou knew just where exactly he had seen this Ichimaru Gin before.

"Ya want somethin'?"

"Do you have an older brother?" He looked like a younger version of that guy he was in his dream or memory or whatever that was. Still, the resemblance was astounding, from the way he held himself to the way his face held that creepy look no matter the situation.

"What's dat to ya?" The kid cocked his head to side in wonder.

The young Yadomaru spared him several more seconds and sighed already turning away to leave. "Doesn't matter." He threw at Gin before disappearing in the crowd of Shinigami that still surrounded the boy and now dead fourth seat.

"How rude." He heard the kid say over the sound of other members of fifth division talking.

It really didn't matter. His division held the records of all shinigami to have existed since founding of Gotei 13. He could just as easily have someone look through them as he could try to get out the truthful information out of that kid. He was pretty sure that whatever Ichimaru Gin said, it had a greater chance of being a lie rather than the truth.

Still, it was strange. The boy looked like that guy could be his twin, or even him and yet one was kid and the other looked to be in his mid-twenties. How could it be? Was it some sort of precognition? Were those not simply dreams or his memories, but visions of future?

The young man rolled his shoulders. His back was giving him hell after three days without any significant rest. Shirou decided to let it rest for the moment and do as Aizen had suggested. He indeed needed rest and maybe resting would clear up his head, since right now he was coming up with strangest of ideas.

* * *

When he arrived back at his office in the second division, two unexpected visitors were waiting for him, Kuchiki Byakuya and a vaguely familiar woman. He already knew what this was about. He hadn't come to their wedding. Byakuya, privy to information not everyone even among ranked officers knew, was probably worried for his former short time mentor. Thus a visit of him out of concern would be nice of him, except that he wouldn't admit it and go about the whole situation in a typical Kuchiki way.

"Yadomaru-san! We've been waiting for you. Don't worry about wedding thing. You probably were too swamped with work to come, with current events and all."

Strange, being so straightforward wasn't very Byakuya-like or Kuchiki-like. The young man was smiling all the way through. He was probably still on that emotional high from all he had experienced in last few days which, unlike for the Gotei, were quite happy.

"It's nice to see you. I suppose everything went alright without me there?" Shirou replied with sarcasm evident in his words.

"Don't flatter yourself too much or Hisana here would think you a fool." The other young man replied with equal tone of sarcasm.

Shirou couldn't believe it. Kuchiki Byakuya had actually taken a joke positively and even managed to reply to it in his own, if clumsy, way. It wasn't much of a joke, nevertheless the black haired young man wasn't much of a joker either and usually treated them as insults. He was the most serious and humorless a person you could find in all of Soul Society. Even old man Yama had his own sense of humor. Still, Shirou supposed that just showed how good of a mood Byakuya was in.

"Right, I suppose I didn't introduce you. This is Hisana, Hisana this is Yadomaru Shirou. I have to thank you for encouraging me that one time." The young woman by his side gave a small bow of her head to the young Yadomaru, trying to appear as ladylike as she could and failing in small details.

"You're welcome… I guess. By the way, have I seen you somewhere before, Hisana-san? Your face seems awfully familiar." At his words the young woman's already pale complexion seemingly become even paler, before she composed herself.

"Maybe if you've been to Inuzuri before, otherwise I don't think so. I would've remembered someone… like you." Hisana fell silent awkwardly uncertain just how the white haired red eyed pale skinned man would react to what she said.

"There's no need to hold your words, I do look kind of strange, but it's nothing for Seireitei standards. We have giants and many others, especially in the twelfth division." And he generally stood by that. Some might think of him as a freak, but that generally subsided once they met Kurotsuchi Mayuri or one of the other twelfth division's members.

"Anyway, Hisana wanted ask your advice on something, so I'll leave you two here."

As the young Kuchiki left, Shirou saw Hisana fidget uncomfortably before she spoke. "Can we talk somewhere more private?"

The young man nodded and began walking towards his office. Something about Hisana was… off. He had impression he had seen her somewhere before, but perhaps that was not it. Perhaps he was just imagining things, like with that Gin kid, though Gin was a bit more complicated.

His head was driving him crazy. He really needed some rest. His office was as messy as always. The thin blanket that usually was on the couch was lying on the floor. One of the two desks was put aside to give more room. Since Yoruichi had never used the office before there had been no real need for two desks, though he couldn't just put it in a warehouse. There were strict rules about division owned property, and it served nicely as a shelf too.

He cast a brief look at a can with coffee, but decided against drinking. After Hisana's business was done, he would try sleeping and drinking coffee worked directly against that goal. He plopped himself onto a chair he had been using for the past ten years and cleared out the space on the desk in front of him so he could see newest member of Kuchiki house. Normally the piles of papers on the desk concealed him from everyone if he didn't do anything to prevent that.

"Is this private enough?" Shirou finally asked as Hisana lowered herself onto the couch.

"Yes, this is a nice place you have-" The woman began deliberately slowly, trying to ease up herself so her words would flow more smoothly.

"Can you get to the point please, not to be rude or anything, but I still have a lot left to do."

She blinked at the interruption, but didn't let it distract her and continued, albeit a little faster. "Ah yes, of course, you are Vice-Captain, right?" The woman stood up and spoke. "First off, I have to thank you for encouraging Byakuya-sama to follow through with his feelings." She bowed her head slightly and sat back down.

"Yet, you did not have me come here just to thank me." The white haired man remarked coolly.

"Yes, Byakuya-sama is truly a wonderful person, I wish I could be like he is someday, but I do not deserve all the devotion I get from him. I am a vile woman. The only reason I stand here today is because I hoped to use Byakuya-sama to find someone. Yet, seeing him-"

He understood now, she wanted some sort of personal favor from him. She probably wanted Byakuya do it at first, but his bright attitude scared her away, so she tried to find out who could help her if not resolve the matter then at least approach the young Kuchiki with that matter.

"Seeing him happy like that makes you apprehensive about approaching him with that matter. I understand." He concluded for her, again interrupting Hisana.

She went silent and looked firmly at him, resolved about her decision. Her lips were pursed, her gaze – strong. Shirou sighed seeing that conviction. She was strong, not in a physical sense, but in a mental one. All strong people had that same gaze, each different in some way and yet very much alike. People weren't born with it, they acquired it with experience, and something told him she had her fair share of that.

Smiling slightly he began. "I see. He is a student of mine, you see." The young man paused for a moment to consider his words. "I taught him, even if it was only for a short while. So I won't ask more questions, I won't tell him about this talk, and I will try to find that person you are looking for." He was about to be finished when another thing came to mind. It was a bit sentimental of him maybe, but he shouldn't regret saying that, even if it wasn't something Yadomaru Shirou would say if he wasn't so tired.

"In return, try to make him a happy man."

* * *

He awoke when something was poured over his face. His eyes snapped open and his hand immediately went for the offending object. When his vision focused on the thing in his hand, he found out that it was a square bottle of expensive whiskey smuggled from the real world by the brainy guys from the twelfth.

Shirou turned to look at the person who had poured it over his face and found an annoyed-looking Soifon there. "Why the fuck would you do this?" He asked, his voice low as he scowled and a vein on his temple pulsed.

The black haired young woman crossed her hands over her chest and spoke. "To wake you up, isn't it obvious? You shouldn't sleep while on duty, you know." Somehow she looked very pleased with herself and despite her obviously serious demeanor, she couldn't quite hide that smile that was threatening to appear on her face.

The young man sat up on his couch while rubbing the bridge of his nose and then corners of his eyes. Shirou yawned, casting a longing look at the now half empty, thanks to Soifon, bottle of whiskey and then spoke, deciding to be a smartass about it. "I haven't had any good shuteye in three days, and I'm off duty, by the way. Since I'm highest ranking officer in the second division I can give myself a day off anytime I want." Seeing that it had no effect on the girl he asked what interested him the most. "Tell me you have good news."

"I do." This time Soifon couldn't stop the smile from blooming on her face. Not the smug smile she put on when she thought she was better than someone. Not the smile she had around Yoruichi. Honestly, he hadn't seeing that kind of smile of hers, but it definitely looked cute.

"You look happy." Shirou smiled despite himself. He couldn't help it; her smile was of the infectious kind. "I guess your training was a success." He got up, his cheeks tinged pink, and trying to save them both the embarrassment turned to the window overlooking one of the main training grounds of the second division.

Soifon coughed, clearing her throat and answered. "Yes."

Deciding that she probably got back into her all business mode once again, Shirou turned back and walked over to the chair and plopped himself onto it, nearly sloshing the whiskey all over the papers as he had forgotten that it even was in his hand. "So, what's it called?" He asked sounding a little sheepish while he made sure none of the important papers were stained with alcohol.

"I'll leave it as a surprise for the captaincy test." Soifon said, looking at the training ground outside while leaning against the wall next to the window.

The white haired man looked at her for a moment trying to judge her mood, then leaned back in his chair and spoke. "Well, cheers for your Bankai then… whatever it's called. Bottoms up."

"You're becoming a drinker, Yadomaru-san." The girl said, removing herself from her place by the wall and repositioning to the couch.

"And you're way too serious, Soifon." He said before taking another sip from the bottle. It was pretty damn strong and burned his throat, but he found himself enjoying the warm feeling that settled in his chest. He wasn't sure if it was even the right way to drink that, but he didn't care as half the bottle had ended up being poured over him anyway. "Yoruichi-san was on to something back there, you should relax more."

"…and a slacker too."

He gave her a slightly offended glare before taking another gulp of the drink and speaking. "Shut it. I did more work than you think."

"Do you have something concrete then?"

That was the question that's been bothering him as well. He honestly didn't know how much he could trust those weird dream visions of his. Yet there was nothing 'concrete' he could give her, so he guessed there were more sleepless days of searching archives ahead and he wasn't looking forward to that. Even if he delegated half his duties to the current fourth seat, there was still a lot he had to get done in the division.

"Maybe, I'm not sure yet." He answered, not willing to discard the entirety of his assumptions. Shirou yawned and continued. "Anyway, go have someone call for a squad assembly. We need to address the men, you won't believe the things happening in the third and fifth division."

* * *

Next Day

* * *

The sight that greeted Shirou in the twelfth division was much better than what he had seen in the other captainless divisions so far. Sure, there were people rushing from place to place, but it looked more like a controlled sort of chaos. It seemed that the chain of command was intact or Urahara had made plans for the case of his disappearance, or something like that anyway.

In the center of that chaos was a strange looking man giving out orders. Kurotsuchi Mayuri. Shirou had looked up some general information on him before giving a visit to the former division of Urahara Kisuke. The man wasn't really all that different from what one would assume of him based on just his looks. In all honesty, Kurotsuchi should have been kept in the Maggot's Nest, but so far the benefits outweighed the risks.

"Third seat Kurotsuchi Mayuri." Shirou said, finally announcing himself without any sort of greeting. "It seems things are quite busy in your division."

The man's eyes widened slightly. He was no doubt ready to demand an explanation of what lieutenant of Second Division was doing in Twelfth, but then his mind seemed to register the word Shirou put right next to 'division'. Then suddenly Mayuri smiled, a wide creepy smile that showed his gums and then disappeared just as suddenly. "Yes, they are, so be quick about it, I don't have time for mundane concerns."

Shirou eyed the Shinigami around them with an obvious look about him that said that the matter was private. Kurotsuchi immediately caught on to that and motioned for him to follow. When they reached a room which was probably some sort of lab, judging by the way it looked, the twelfth's third seat turned to Shirou and stared at him expectantly.

"My concerns are not so mundane, I fear. How do I start… the situation with Urahara Kisuke and his associates is very suspicious. It might have very well been a set up, it might have not been a set up. Still, there is no denying that there is something more to it than Urahara experimenting on creating hybrids."

"Yes, I have been able to read the reports. The idea is fascinating."

"What I want are Urahara's logs and any notes he may have left." The unspoken threat was there. As an effective commander of the Second Division Shirou had all the power he needed to have Kurotsuchi back in Maggot's Nest by the end of the day. Yet he didn't press the man, he wanted to give him some room for barter, so he would feel more 'conversational'.

"Hmmmm… I wonder." The man rubbed his chin and looked at the luminescent lamp on the ceiling.

He must have caught on to the other thing Shirou had left unspoken. The other reason they were speaking at the moment was because Kurotsuchi Mayuri was suspicious and Shirou knew to expect something from him. If everything worked out they would have some sort of alliance. An alliance born out of mutual distrust.

Turning his eyes back to the white haired man, Kurotsuchi spoke. "Everything has a price, information especially so. An equal exchange, how about it?"

"That's reasonable, but I don't understand what you would want from me."

The man smiled and pointed his index finger upwards and began. "Ah, that is quite simple. I want whatever record the second division might have about me. Any 'misinformation' about me will be cleaned up and I want a recommendation of your future captain for the time I eventually apply for the position myself."

So, he wanted to become a captain. Just as expected, but it wasn't a secret anyway, so there was no need to jump in triumph. He was a scientist first and foremost, and he and Urahara and every other successful scientist had to be amoral to be successful, so in the end it wouldn't be much worse than with Urahara as the head of the Twelfth.

His mental health was another problem altogether, however. A problem which he would let the fourth division handle. Making sure Captains of Gotei 13 were at least a bit sane was in their jurisdiction.

"That's not too difficult." Shirou nodded in agreement and allowed himself to look around and ponder about his course of action.

Cleaning up any left over documents would be an easy task, especially so when Mayuri couldn't confirm that the information really was 'cleaned up' so to speak. The danger of tracking devices was still there, but he was willing to take the risk.

"I consider it an investment in my future." The blue haired man said and then added as an afterthought. "I'll send any documents Urahara has left behind tomorrow."

When Shirou was on his way to exit Kurotsuchi spoke again. "I'm looking forward to the results of your investigation."

Pausing for a moment the white haired man stood there in silence. After several seconds he replied. "And I'm looking towards the results of our partnership."

* * *

Shirou awoke with a jerk and found himself in his office on his couch, wrapped in blanket and sweating a cold sweat. The young man rubbed his hair and his hand was left as wet as it would have been if he put it into water. He grimaced and got up.

It was past midnight and the only lights outside came from unseated Shinigami doing rounds. He paced with single thought in his head: the Hollow World. Hueco Mundo.

Something was happening there. Something big. He was sure of it. But even if he knew that something was happening there, there wasn't much he could do about it. There wasn't much he knew about that place either.

He couldn't do it alone, that he was sure of. He also was sure that he wouldn't be able to just waltz in there. Only Hollows could go there as they pleased, and they still had to open a special portal to the place, but they had the ability to do that.

Perhaps Kurotsuchi could do something about the portal. But he himself would have to take care of organizing some sort of expedition. Alone he wouldn't amount to anything in a place like that, especially not without Shikai.

He didn't have enough authority to introduce the notion of an expedition into the hostile territory belonging to Hollows. Hollows far stronger than any normal Shinigami would even think of encountering in their lifetime.

If he wanted to go there he would need a couple hundreds of talented Shinigami, and that meant funding and time to find them, a promise of something great to find and just a whole lot of luck.

There were many ways he could go about acquiring funding, and time was something he had in spades, since it would take a few weeks for Soifon to get used to her captaincy when she passed her test and then an indefinite amount of time for Kurotsuchi to take care of the portal problem.

The promise of finding something great wasn't so easy, since he didn't know what he was looking for out there. He also needed something that would make the Central 46 want the expedition to happen. And that probably was the hardest part.

There was also the fact that if he wanted to go with the expedition, or even better, lead it, he needed to find a replacement for himself. Someone who would be talented enough to meet the skill requirements, since there was no Yoruichi calling in her favors, and someone responsible enough to take his duties seriously. Maybe he could request a transfer from another division, but that would have to wait until he could make a list of potential candidates.

And there was also another very, very important thing. He had to regain the feeling of fighting with his life in danger. Too much time has passed since he was even remotely close to the danger of dying.

He trained for a few hours every day, but that was enough only to keep in shape so to say. He had to keep his skills as sharp as he could, since he had no Shikai. But to be able to fight effectively in hostile territory and hostile conditions, he needed more than that.

He'd have to confront that woman again about her name. Even if there was almost no chance of her giving it away, he had to try. And like Urahara had once said, women were all about persistence. Or something like that. He had most likely said something similar, but not quite the same thing.

The young man rubbed his face and sighed. Switching the lights on he went to his desk and started on the report that should have been finished already, but wasn't due to him being too busy with the investigation.

* * *

**AN: **We have Mayuri on scene now. He will appear sometimes. Well, token evil teammate, so… yeah. I like him. The reason? I like strange/creepy characters. I also like his design and zanpakuto. Although, he won't do much fighting.

Also, I went back and tried reading this thing from prologue onwards and was horrified. And I thought this chapter was bad... If this one's bad then those are horrible. Either I myself grew up a lot since I posted the rewritten version or my writing skills have become so much better, I don't know. But that was terrible and by third chapter I wanted to rewrite it for the third time (If you don't know and you most likely don't, Dreamer has already been rewritten when the first version reached its fourth chapter or something like that) I compromised with myself and edited some things to be truer to the newest revelations in manga (asauchi nature and zanpakutos mainly) as well as added some lines where it felt appropriate. Everything from prologue to chapter 4 had been updated. 5 and 6 are not so bad so I'll edit them sometime later.

Leave a review, if you're not a stingy jew like me, be better than I am! Also point out mistakes and inconsistencies, if you see any.

P.S. We also have a story cover now, the original image is by some deviantart person I think (I think, I'm not so sure), and is a fanart for Dogs: Bullets&Carnage manga done by Miwa Shirow, which I fucking love and which manages to have even less backgrounds than Bleach. I have photoshopped the picture a little making it into what it is at the moment and that's it, there you have it.


End file.
